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IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 



IT 

MIGHT HAVE BEEN 

WORSE 

A MOTOR TRIP FROM COAST 
TO COAST 

BY 
BEATRICE LARNED MASSEY 




SAN FRANCISCO 

HARRWAGNER PUBLISHING CO. 

MCMXX 



Copyright, ig20, by 'Beatrice Lamed ^Massey 



MAR -I 1920 

"Printed by Taylor i^ Taylor, San Francisco 



i 



^ 



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©CI.A559878 



TO MY DEAR MR.J^IP 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE START I 

II. NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH 6 

III. OHIO AND DETOURS 20 

IV. ON TO CHICAGO 3O 
V. THROUGH THE DAIRY COUNTRY 39 

VI. CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 43 
VII. THE TWIN CITIES AND TEN THOUSAND LAKES 54 

VIII. MILLIONS OF GRASSHOPPERS 62 

IX. THE BAD LANDS "nATURE's FREAKIEST 

mood" 70 

x. the dust of montana ^j 

xi. a wonderland 87 

XII. WESTWARD HO ! IO3 

XIII. NEVADA AND THE DESERT 1 17 

XIV. THE END OF THE ROAD I3O 



FOREWORD 

(jKLay I state, at the start , that this account of our 
motor trip from New Tork^ City to San Francisco is 
intended to he not only a road map and a motor guide 
for prospective tourists, hut also to interest the would- 
be or near motorists who take dream trips to the Pa- 
cific? It sounds like a rather large order y to motor 
across this vast continent, but in reality it is simple, 
and the most interesting trip I have ever taken in our 
own country or abroad. 

"There are so many so-called ^^ highways'' to follow, 
and numerous routes which, according to the folders, 
have ^^good roads and first-class accommodations all the 
way,'' that hundreds of unsuspecting citizens are tour- 
ing across every year. I can speak only for ourselves, 
and will doubtless call down the criticism of many who 
have taken any other route. On the whole, it has been 
a revelation, and, to my mind, the only way to get a 
first-hand knowledge of our country, its people, the 
scenery, and last, but not the least, its roads —good, 
bad, and infinitely worse, 

B. L. M. 

San Francis CO y January, ig20 



IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 



IT 

MIGHT HAVE BEEN 

WORSE 



I 

THE START 

/\fter reading "By Motor to the Golden 
Gate/' by Emily Post, published in 1916, I 
was fired by a desire to make a similar tour. 
This desire grew into a firm determination 
the more I re-read her charming book. Then 
the United States went into the war, and self- 
respecting citizens were not spending months 
amusing themselves; so all thought of the 
trip was put aside until the spring of this 
year (1919). Then the^motor fever" came on 
again, and refused to yield to any sedatives 
of advice or obstacles. After talking and plan- 
ning for three years, we actually decided to 
go in ten minutes — and in ten days we were 
off. All the necessary arrangements were 



2 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

quickly made; leasing our home, storing our 
household goods, closing up business mat- 
ters, getting our equipment and having the 
car thoroughly looked over, and all the pleas- 
ant but unnecessary duties occupied the last 
few days. Why will people write so many let- 
ters and say so many good-bys, when a more 
or less efficient mail and telegraph service cir- 
cles our continent? But it is the custom, and 
all your friends expect it — like sending East- 
er and Christmas cards by the hundreds. We 
are victims of a well-prescribed custom. 

It is always of interest to me to know the 
make of car that a friend (or stranger) is 
driving; so let me say, without any desire 
to advertise the Packard, that we had a new 
twin-six touring car, of which I shall speak 
later on. I believe in giving just tribute to 
any car that will come out whole and in ex- 
cellent condition, without any engine troubles 
or having to be repaired, after a trip of 4154 
miles over plains and mountains, through 
ditches, ruts, sand, and mud, fording streams 
and two days of desert-going. And let me add 
that my husband and I drove every mile of 
the way. It is needless to say that the car was 
not overstrained or abused, and was given 



THE START 3 

every care on the trip. In each large city the 
Packard service station greased and oiled the 
car, turned down the grease-cups, examined 
the brakes and steering-gear, and started us 
off in "apple-pie" order, with a feeling on our 
parts of security and satisfaction. 

The subject of car equipment, tires, clothes, 
and luggage will take a chapter by itself. But 
let me say that we profited in all these re- 
gards by the experience and valuable sugges- 
tions of Mrs. Post in her book. 

When we first spoke to our friends of mak- 
ing this trip, it created as little surprise or 
comment as if we had said, "We are going to 
tour the Berkshires.'' The motor mind has 
so grown and changed in a few years. Near- 
ly everyone had some valuable suggestion to 
make, but one only which we accepted and 
profited by. Every last friend and relative 
that we had offered to go in some capacity — 
private secretaries, chauffeurs, valets, maids, 
and traveling companions. But our con- 
science smote us when we looked at that ton- 
neau, the size of a small boat, empty, save 
for our luggage, which, let me add with in- 
finite pride and satisfaction, was not on the 
running-boards, nor strapped to the back. 



4 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

From the exterior appearance of the car we 
might have been shopping on Fifth Avenue. 

We extended an invitation to two friends 
to accompany us, which was accepted by re- 
turn mail, with the remark, ''Go ! — of course, 
we will go ! Never give such an invitation to 
this family unless you are in earnest." And 
so our genial friends joined us, and we picked 
them up at the Seymour Hotel in New York 
City, at three o'clock, Saturday, July 19th, 
and started for the Forty-second-Street ferry 
in a pouring rain, as jolly and happy a quar- 
tette as the weather would permit. Our 
guests were a retired physician, whom we 
shall speak of as the Doctor, and his charm- 
ing, somewhat younger wife, who, although 
possessing the perfectly good name of Helen, 
was promptly dubbed "Toodles" for no rea- 
son in the world. These dear people were of 
the much-traveled type, who took everything 
in perfect good-nature and were never at all 
fussy nor disturbed by late hours, delays, 
bad weather, nor any of the usual fate of mo- 
torists, and they both added to the pleasure 
of the trip as far as they accompanied us. 

It had rained steadily for three days be- 
fore we started and it poured torrents for 



THE START 5 

three days after; but that was to be expected, 
and the New Jersey and Pennsylvania roads 
were none the worse, and the freedom from 
dust was a boon. We chose for the slogan of 
our trip, ''It might have been worse." The 
Doctor had an endless fund of good stories, 
of two classes, "table and stable stories," and 
I regret to say that this apt slogan was taken 
from one of his choicest stable stories, and 
quite unfit for publication. However, it did 
fit our party in its optimism and cheery at- 
mosphere. 

With a last look at the wonderful sky-line 
of the city, and the hum and whirl of the 
great throbbing metropolis, lessening in the 
swirl of the Hudson River, we really were 
started; with our faces turned to the setting 
sun, and the vast, wonderful West before us. 



II 

NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH 

vJne of the all-absorbing pleasures in con- 
templating a long trip is to map out your 
route. You hear how all your friends have 
gone, or their friends, then you load up with 
maps and folders, especially those published 
by all the auto firms and tire companies, you 
pore over the Blue Book of the current year, 
and generally end by going the way you want 
to go, through the cities where you have 
friends or special interests. This is exactly 
what we did. As the trip was to be taken in 
mid-summer, we concluded to take a north- 
ern route from Chicago, via Milwaukee, St. 
Paul, Fargo, Billings, Yellowstone Park, Salt 
Lake City, Ogden, Reno, Sacramento, to San 
Francisco (see map), and, strange to relate, 
we followed out the tour as we had planned 
it. With the exception of a few hot days in 
the larger cities and on the plains, and, of 
course, in the desert, we justified our decision. 
As I have stated, we drove 4154 miles, 
through sixteen states and the Yellowstone 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH 7 

Park, in thirty-three running days, and the 
trip took just seven weeks to the day, includ- 
ing seventeen days spent in various cities, 
where we rested and enjoyed the sights. As 
time was of no special object, and we were 
not attempting to break any records, we felt 
free to start and stop when we felt inclined to 
do so; on only two mornings did we start be- 
fore nine-thirty, and seldom drove later than 
seven in the evening. In so doing, we made a 
pleasure of the trip and not a duty,and avoid- 
ed any unusual fatigue. 

The first evening we reached Easton, Penn- 
sylvania. We were glad to get into the com- 
fortable Huntington Hotel out of the wet, 
and enjoyed a good dinner and a night's rest. 
We followed the Lincoln Highway to Pitts- 
burgh, and have only praise to offer for the 
condition of the road and the beauty of the 
small towns through which we went. Of all 
the states that we crossed, Pennsylvania 
stands out par excellence in good roads, clean, 
attractive towns, beautiful farming country 
and fruit belts, and well-built, up-to-date 
farm buildings. In other states we found 
many such farms, but in Pennsylvania it was 
exceptional to find a poor, tumble -down 



8 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

farmhouse or barn. The whole state had an 
air of thrift and prosperity, and every little 
home was surrounded by fine trees, flowers, 
and a well-kept vegetable garden. 

The worst bugbear of the motorist are the 
detours. Just why the road commissioners 
choose the height of the motoring season to 
tear up the main highways and work the 
roads has always been a mystery to me, and 
I have never heard any logical solution of it. 
We were often told that no work to speak of 
had been done on the state roads through the 
country during the war, and in many places 
the heavy army trucks had cut up the good 
roads until the ruts left turtle-backed ridges 
in the center, not at all pleasant to bob along 
on. But, in view of what we encountered later 
in our trip, I look back on the Pennsylvania 
roads as one of the high spots and pleasures, 
never to be undervalued. 

From Easton we drove in the rain to Har- 
risburg. The scenery was beautiful. The Blue 
Ridge and the Alleghaney Mountains loomed 
up in the haze like great cathedrals; but as 
long as the road was wide and comparatively 
smooth we enjoyed the ups and downs. Our 
engine told us that we were gradually as- 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH 9 

cending; the mist would be wafted off by a 
mountain breeze, and then a gorgeous pano- 
rama stretched before us as far as the eye 
could see. 

We found Harrisburg a busy, thriving city, 
with well-paved streets, attractive homes, 
and many fine buildings. The leading hotel, 
the Penn Harris, was turning away guests; 
so we were made very comfortable at the 
Senate. Here the cafe was miserable, but we 
went to the restaurant of the Penn Harris 
and had an excellent dinner at moderate 
prices. We have found that at the largest, 
best hotels the food was better cooked and 
much cheaper than at the smaller ones. Usu- 
ally we had excellent club breakfasts from 
forty cents up, and club lunches, with an am- 
ple selection of good things to eat, for fifty 
or sixty cents. You may pay more for your 
room and bath, but you get more for your 
money, with better service. We made it a rule 
to go to the newest, largest hotels, and in- 
dulge in every comfort that was afforded. 
Why? Not to be extravagant, nor to say that 
we had stopped at such or such hotels. After 
you have driven day after day, and come in 
stiff and tired, there is no bed too soft and no 



lO IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

bathroom too luxurious to overrest your 
mind and body. Economize in other ways if 
you must, but not on good food and com- 
fortable lodgings. 

Our third day was still a drizzle; we would 
no sooner have the top down than we would 
have to put it up again, and often the side 
curtains as well. Our objective point was the 
charmingly quaint town of Bedford, and the 
Bedford Arms. This part of Pennsylvania 
was more beautiful than what we had been 
through, and every mile of the day's run was 
a pleasure. 

I have not spoken of our lunches, a most 
important item by one o'clock. We had 
brought a small English hamper, fitted with 
the usual porcelain dishes, cutlery, tin boxes, 
etc., for four people, and unless we were pos- 
itive that a good place to eat was midway on 
the road, we prepared a lunch, or had the ho- 
tel put one up for us. This latter plan proved 
both expensive and unsatisfactory. Usually 
Toodles was sent foraging to the delicates- 
sen shops for fresh rolls, cold meats and sand- 
wiches, eggs, fruit, tomatoes, and bakery 
dainties, and the hotel filled our thermos- 
bottles with hot coffee. We carried salt and 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH II 

pepper, mustard, sweet and sour pickles, or a 
relish, orange marmalade, or a fruit jam, in 
the hamper, and beyond that we took no 
staple supplies on the whole trip. We met so 
many people who carried with them a whole 
grocery-store, even to sacks of flour, that you 
would imagine there was not a place to get 
food from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Often 
later on we would meet these same people 
and find that they had thrown or given away 
most of their larder. Of course, the camping 
parties, which are legion, are houses on 
wheels! Aside from the tents, poles, bedding, 
and cooking utensils, we have seen stoves, 
sewing-machines, crates of tinned foods, 
trunks full of every conceivable incumbrance 
they could buy, strapped to the back and 
sides and even on the top of the car, and usu- 
ally the personal luggage jammed in between 
the mud-guards and hood of the engine. A 
traveling circus is an orderly, compact mini- 
ature in comparison. And the people! — sit- 
ting on top of a mountain of baggage, or un- 
der it, the picture of w^oe and discomfort. 
That may be fun, but I fear I have not devel- 
oped a capacity for such pleasure. Have you 
ever seen a party of this description unpack 



12 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

and strike camp after a hot, broiling, dusty 
day of hard travel? You will do as we did — 
drive right ahead until you come to a clean 
hotel and a bath. 

We have been told so often that one has to 
develop an "open-air" spirit to really enjoy a 
long motor trip! Quite true! I can't imagine 
what the fun can be of touring in a closed 
limousine, and yet we have met that particu- 
larly exclusive party more than once. On the 
whole, an absence of flies, ants, mosquitoes, 
and sand and dust in one's bed and food does 
not detract from the pleasure of the trip. It 
may be all right to endure such annoyances 
for a few days in the woods, to fish or hunt — 
but weeks and more weeks of it! We admit 
our ''lack,'' whatever it may be termed, and 
enjoy clean linen, hot tubs, and tables that 
have legs not belonging to ants and spiders. 

In Wisconsin we met a most unique and 
charming couple, both past fifty, who had 
lived all over the world, even in South Amer- 
ica, a Mr. X and wife, from Washington, D. 
C. They were going on the same route as we 
were, and back to Washington, via southern 
California, the Yosemite, New Mexico, New 
Orleans, and then north. So their trip would 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH I3 

be twice as long as ours. They loved the open, 
with that two-ton-equipment enthusiasm ex- 
celling all others we had met. From an over- 
stocked medicine chest, so carefully stowed 
away that they bought what they wanted en 
route rather than unload everything to try to 
find it, to a complete wardrobe for every oc- 
casion, which was never unpacked, they had 
every conceivable utensil that a well-fur- 
nished apartment could boast of. They even 
bought a small puppy, as a protection at 
night when camping; the poor little beast 
caught cold and crawled under the pile and 
died. They solved the lunch problem in a 
unique way. If they passed a good corn-field, 
they ''procured" a few ears and stopped at 
the next farmhouse and calmly asked the 
loan of the kitchen for a short time, and 
cooked their corn and bought bread and 
milk, etc. Mrs. X remarked: "It is all so sim- 
ple! We have all these things in case we 
should need them, but they are so well 
packed in the car it is really too bad to dis- 
turb them; so I live in one gown, and we buy 
what we need, and it is most satisfactory.'' 
Later we learned that they had camped out 
just three nights in several weeks. 



14 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

But I have digressed, and left you at the 
Bedford Arms, one of the most artistic, at- 
tractive inns that we found. The Httle touch- 
es showed a woman's hand. Flowers every- 
where, dainty cretonnes, willow furniture, 
and pretty, fine china; in appearance, cour- 
tesy, and efficiency, the maids in the dining- 
room might have come from a private dwell- 
ing. Will someone tell me why there are not 
more such charming places to stop at on our 
much-traveled main highways. Why must ho- 
tel men buy all the heavy, hideous furniture, 
the everlasting red or green carpets and im- 
possible wall-paper, to make night hideous 
for their guests — to say nothing of the pic- 
tures on their walls? It is a wonder one can 
sleep. 

There is much of interest to see in Bed- 
ford — really old, artistic houses, not spoiled 
by modern gewgaws, set in lovely gardens of 
old-fashioned flowers, neatly trimmed hedg- 
es, and red brick walks. There were few early 
Victorian eyesores to mar the general beauty 
of the town. As we were walking down the 
main street about sunset, we heard a great 
chattering and chirping, as if a thousand 
birds were holding a jubilee. Looking up, we 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH I5 

found, on a projecting balcony running along 
the front of all the buildings for two blocks, 
hundreds of martins discussing the League 
of Nations and Peace Treaty quite as vigor- 
ously as were their senatorial friends in 
Washington. They were fluttering about and 
making a very pretty picture. It sounded Hke 
the bird market in Paris on a Sunday morn- 
ing, which, in passing, is an interesting sight 
that few tourists ever see. 

It was with regret that we left the next 
morning for Pittsburgh. The day was clear 
and cool and the best part of the Lincoln 
Highway was before us; in fact, the first real 
thrill so far, and one of the high spots of the 
trip. This was a stretch of seven and a half 
miles of tarvia road on the top ridge of the 
Alleghany Mountains, as smooth as marble, 
as straight as the bee flies, looking like a strip 
of satin ribbon as far as the eye could see. On 
both sides were deep ravines, well wooded, 
and valleys green with abundant crops, and 
still higher mountains rising in a haze of blue 
and purple coloring, making a picture that 
would never be forgotten. The top was down 
and we stopped the car again and again, to 
drink it in, and, as one of us remarked, "We 



l6 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

may see more grand and rugged scenery lat- 
er on, but we shall not see anything more 
beautiful than this" — and it proved true. 

We had come 442 miles, from New York 
to Pittsburgh, over fine roads and through 
beautiful country. Approaching Pittsburgh, 
we came in on a boulevard overlooking the 
river and "valley of smoke." Great stacks 
were belching out soot and smoke, obliter- 
ating the city and even the sky and sun. They 
may have a smoke ordinance, but no one has 
ever heard of it. We arrived at the William 
Penn Hotel, in the heart of the business cen- 
ter of the city, a first-class, fine hotel in every 
regard. We found the prices reasonable for 
the excellent service afforded, which was 
equal to that of any New York hotel. The 
dining-room, on the top of the house, was 
filled with well-dressed people, and we were 
glad that we had unpacked our dinner clothes, 
and appeared less like the usual tourist, in 
suits and blouses. It was frightfully hot dur- 
ing our two days' stay. You go out to drive 
feeling clean and immaculate, and come in 
with smuts and soot on your face and clothes, 
looking like a foundry hand. The office build- 
ings are magnificent, and out a bit in the 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH I7 

parks and boulevards the homes are attrac- 
tive, and many are very handsome, especially 
in Sewickley. But aside from the dirty atmo- 
sphere one is impressed mostly by the evi- 
dences of the outlay of immense v^ealth. An 
enthusiastic brother living there took us 
through a number of the business blocks, and 
told us of the millions each cost and the al- 
most unbelievable amount of business car- 
ried on. I can only describe Pittsburgh as the 
proudest city v^e visited. Not so much of the 
actual wealth represented, but of what the 
billions had accomplished in great industries. 
We went out in the evening and stood on one 
of the bridges to look over the river lined 
with monster furnaces. The air was filled 
with sparks, jets of flame bursting through 
the smoke. All you could think of was Dante's 
Inferno visualized. And what of the men who 
spend their lives in that lurid atmosphere, 
never knowing if the sun shone, nor what 
clean, pure air was like in their working 
hours ? I shall never look at a steel structure 
again without giving more credit to the men 
who spend their waking hours in those hells 
of heat and smoke than to the men whose 
millions have made it possible. 



l8 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

The second day, nothing daunted by the 
heat, we went out to the St. Clair Country 
Club for lunch and golf, about a twenty-mile 
run through the suburbs. This is a compar- 
atively small and new club, but our host told 
us that they were soon to have a fine club- 
house and improve the links. The location 
is attractive, and the luncheon was delicious. 
We had brought our golf bags, tennis rac- 
quets, and bathing suits with us, much to the 
amusement of our friends. After sitting in 
the car day in and day out, I know of no bet- 
ter way to stretch your legs and arms and to 
exercise your stiff muscles than to put in a 
few hours at either game. My husband de- 
scribed this course thus: ^'You have to hold 
on to a tree with one hand and drive with the 
other, the bally course is so steep." There are 
many more pretentious country clubs and 
golf links about Pittsburg, but this small one 
had charm and a homelike atmosphere. Our 
last evening we were taken to the "New 
China," the last word in Chinese restaurants 
— beautiful, clean, and artistic! You have 
your choice of American or Chinese dishes. 
As we were looking for sensations, we or- 
dered some marvelous dishes with impossi- 



NEW YORK TO PITTSBURGH IQ 

ble names. One portion was sufficient for 
three hungry people. The other two portions 
were untouched. I do not know what we ate, 
but it was delicious. Truth compels me to 
state that we were all ill for three days, and 
decided to patronize home cooking in the fu- 
ture. 

We did not get away until noon the next 
day, as our auto top had been torn in the 
garage, and the manager kept out of sight 
until noon, and then, after considerable pres- 
sure had been brought to bear, he made a 
cash settlement of fifteen dollars, wishing us 
all the bad luck his "Mutt and Jeff" mind 
could conjure. 



Ill 

OHIO AND DETOURS 

We were assured that we should find good 
roads through Ohio to Cleveland, where we 
were to take the D. & C. steamer to Detroit. 
If we were to take this part of the trip again, 
we should certainly go to Chicago, via Tole- 
do and South Bend, Indiana. As we had rela- 
tives in Detroit waiting in the heat to see us, 
and to depart for cooler climes, we took the 
most direct route through Youngstown, 
Ohio, to Cleveland. The roads were poor and 
the many detours were almost impassable — 
over high hills, on narrow sandy roads, wind- 
ing like a letter S through the woods. One 
long stretch was so narrow that two cars 
could not pass; so they had two roads, one 
going each way. The Doctor remarked, "I 
wonder what would happen if a car broke 
down on this detour." Prophetic soul! He no 
sooner had said it than we rounded a curve, 
and presto ! there were six cars, puffing and 
snorting, lined up back of an Overland car, 
which was disabled and stuck fast in the 



OHIO AND DETOURS 21 

sand. In half an hour there were ten cars 
back of ours — and the sun setting over the 
hills, and fifty miles to Youngstown! The 
owner of the car knew nothing of his engine. 
Heaven save us from such motorists! But 
Heaven did not save us, for we met dozens of 
men, headed for the wilds of somewhere, who 
were as blissfully ignorant of what made the 
wheels go round as their wives were. 

It may have been a coincidence, but is nev- 
ertheless a fact, that nearly every car we saw 
disabled, ditched, stuck in the mud or sand, 
or being towed in, on the entire trip, was an 
Overland car. It really became a joke. When 
we saw a wreck ahead of us, some one ex- 
claimed, "Dollars to doughnuts it is an Over- 
land!" — and it generally was. It used to be a 
common expression, "If you wished to really 
know people, travel with them.'' I would 
change it to "Motor, and grow wise.'' There 
were as many varieties of dispositions in that 
belated crowd as there were people. Every- 
one got out of his car and went ahead to the 
wreck, offering advice, growling, complain- 
ing, and cursing Ohio detours. A few sat on 
the roadside and laughed, chatted, or read 
the papers. As it was hot and dusty, we looked 



22 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

like an emigrant train. My husband is an en- 
gineer with a knowledge of cars. He sug- 
gested some simple remedy which enabled 
the man to get his car to the next siding, and 
we all started with a whoop of joy on the 
wretched road, leaving the Overland owner 
to spend the night at a farmhouse near by. 
Our troubles were not over. With a steep 
grade before us, I was driving, going up 
steadily on second speed, when a real wreck 
loomed up three-quarters of the way to the 
top of the hill. Two drunken niggers had up- 
set a rickety old truck loaded with furniture 
in the center of the road, and their car had 
zigzagged across the road, narrowly escap- 
ing a plunge down the steep embankment. 
You could not pass on either side; so, with 
my heart in my mouth, I reversed, backing 
our car into the farther side of the road, with 
two wheels in a deep stony ditch, but safe 
from sliding down-hill on top of the cars 
coming up back of us. It looked as if we were 
to share the fate of our Overland friend and 
stay there indefinitely. We all jumped out 
and tried to clear the house and lot out of our 
way. Those miserable niggers just sat on top 
of the debris and refused to work. After tug- 



OHIO AND DETOURS 23 

ging at spring beds and filthy bedding, we 
succeeded in getting it pushed to one side. I 
had had enough driving for one day, so gave 
the v^heel to my husband, and he started the 
engine. We did not budge! The next half- 
hour v^as spent in filling up the ditch w^ith 
stones and making a bridge by covering the 
stones v^ith boards. Eventually the car start- 
ed, pulling itself out of the slough of despair, 
and narrowly escaped turning turtle. The 
Doctor, Toodles,and I all called wildly,"Keep 
going! don't stop!"- — and on he climbed to 
the top, while we trudged up through the 
dust, a quarter of a mile. All that night I 
dreamt I was backing off the Alps into space. 
Oh, what a tired, dirty party it was that 
drove up to the Ohio Hotel in Youngstown 
that night! Someone had told us that there 
was a good hotel in Youngstown, but we soon 
came to form our own conclusions about ho- 
tels. This was a delightful surprise. Not only 
good, but wonderful, for a city of the size of 
Youngstown. After we were scrubbed and 
sitting down to a delicious dinner in the big 
cool cafe, a broad smile spread over the table, 
and the Doctor suggested, "You know, it 
really might have been worse!'' 



24 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

The next day we had more detours ; but, in 
the main, the state highways, w^^;2 they could 
be traversed, were good. The rural scenery 
through Ohio was pleasing, but we had left 
the Lincoln Highway and the beautiful farms 
of Pennsylvania. 

We reached Cleveland by four, driving di- 
rectly to the D.&C. wharves. The "Eastern 
States" was being loaded, and the monster 
"City of Detroit III," a floating palace, was 
starting out for Buffalo, I believe. Although 
the week-end travel is always heavy, and this 
was Friday, we were most fortunate in get- 
ting staterooms, with brass beds (not bunks), 
running water, and a bathroom. It may be of 
interest to state that the cost of shipping the 
car to Detroit, a night's run, was only $14.50. 
As we did not sail until nine o'clock, and we 
could not go aboard nor leave the car, we 
drove out the Lake Shore drive overlooking 
Lake Erie, through beautiful suburbs, with 
attractive homes and gardens, and then 
something told us it must be time to investi- 
gate the hotels. As we had all sampled the 
excellent cooking at the Statler, we dined at 
the fine Cleveland Hotel — modern in all its 
appointments, in good taste, and unexcelled 



OHIO AND DETOURS 25 

service. We remarked the appearance of the 
people. There was not a smartly gowned 
woman in the dining-room, and the waiters 
had a monopoly of the dress suits. Being hot, 
and in midsummer, and a more or less tran- 
sient gathering, might have been the reason. 
In many large cities, in first-class hotels, we 
found the tired business men in business 
suits and the women in skirts and blouses. 
Never did anything taste more delicious than 
the broiled fresh whitefish, just out of the 
lake, green corn on the cob, melons, and 
peaches. As long as we remained in the Great 
Lakes region, we reveled in the whitefish, 
broiled, saute, or baked. It is the king of 
fresh-water fish. 

I am beginning to realize that I am ex- 
hausting my descriptive adjectives when it 
comes to hotels. Time was, not so very far 
distant, when a hotel like the Cleveland was 
not to be found, except in possibly half a doz- 
en cities in this country. Now it is the rule. 
On all our long trip, with the exception of 
three nights, we had perfectly comfortable, 
clean double rooms, usually with twin beds, 
and private baths with modern sanitary 
plumbing and an abundance of hot, not tepid, 



26 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

water. We have been assured by the proprie- 
tors that the change has been wrought by 
motorists who demanded better lodgings. I 
think the farmer is the only member of soci- 
ety who still holds a grudge against us as a 
class; but when he is the proud possessor of 
a "Little Henry" he slides over to our side 
unconsciously. A book could be written on 
"Motoring as an art, a profession, a pastime, 
a luxury or a necessity, a money maker or a 
spender, a joy or a nuisance'' — and then 
much more ! 

Before leaving Cleveland I must speak of 
its fine municipal buildings, its many indus- 
tries, and its far-famed Euclid Avenue, once 
the finest of streets, lined on both sides with 
massive, splendid residences, many with 
grounds a block square; alas! long since 
turned into boarding-houses, clubs, and 
places of business — the inevitable transition 
from a small to a great city. 

Our trip across Lake Erie was quiet and 
cooling. That is not always the case, even on 
such big steamers as the D. &C. line affords. 
I have seen that lake lashed into fury by 
waves that rocked the largest bo^t like a coc- 
kleshell. Breakfast on the steamer was all 



OHIO AND DETOURS 2^ 

that could be desired. It was some time be- 
fore we had the car on the dock, ready to 
start to our hotel in Detroit. The ride up the 
river had been interesting, past old Fort 
Wayne, the Great Lakes engineering plant 
and dry docks, and the grain elevators ; even 
at that early hour (seven a. m.) the wharves 
were alive with the bustle of trade. 

Here I pause. Detroit was my home city 
and that of my father and grandfather in ter- 
ritorial days. My earliest recollections of it 
were of broad streets, fine homes, and an at- 
mosphere of dignified culture and home-lov- 
ing people. But now! It has outgrown recog- 
nition. It has outgrown every semblance of 
its former charm. Like Cleveland, the old 
homes on the principal avenues are all given 
over to trade, and the streets down-town are 
overcrowded, noisy, and well-nigh impassa- 
ble. The Statler is a new and fine hotel. We 
went to the Pontchartrain, formerly the old 
Russell House, which in its palmy days, in 
the Messrs. Chittenden regime, was the cen- 
ter of the social life of Detroit. It has passed 
through several hands, and is now doubtless 
torn down. We found it run down and unde- 
sirable in every way. Even then we felt more 



28 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

at home there and made the best of things. 
We spent two and a half days, as hot as I 
ever experienced. The nights were so hot that 
sleep was out of the question. A drive around 
the Island Park, Belle Isle, cooled us off a bit. 
Thousands were taking advantage of the 
municipal bathhouses or a swim in the river. 

If the city has been spoiled down-town, it 
has been equally beautified in the outlying 
sections. The drive to Grosse Pointe along 
Lake St. Clair has ten miles of residences un- 
surpassed in America. The magnificent home 
of Senator Truman Newberry and dozens of 
others that could be mentioned, set in acres 
of highly cultivated grounds, commanding 
an unobstructed view of Lake St. Clair, are 
worthy of a special trip to Detroit to see. 

We lunched at the Country Club, but weak- 
ened when it came to trying the celebrated 
golf links. It was too boiling hot ! There were 
not more than a dozen people at the club. 
Usually the place was crowded. There are 
other fine clubs and links about Detroit, and 
the city seems to have gone golf mad — a very 
healthful form of insanity! The Detroit Ath- 
letic Club, in the business center, claims to be 
the finest private city club in America. If pat- 



OHIO AND DETOURS 2g 

ronage is any indication of its excellence, this 
must be true. My brother, Mr. L., gave us a 
beautiful dinner there, and we certainly have 
not seen anything to surpass it. Our time was 
all too quickly spent, and the heat literally 
drove us out of town. Before leaving, we paid 
our respects to the mayor, Mr. C, an old- 
time friend. While we were pleasantly chat- 
ting with him and he was graciously offering 
us the keys of the city, my husband had a 
summons served on him and the car locked 
for leaving it more than an hour at the curb. 
He was taken to police headquarters and 
paid his fine and then returned for us. As we 
were praising the efficiency of the mayor, he 
gave us a knowing smile, and some days later 
showed us his summons ! 



IV 

ON TO CHICAGO 

1 REALIZE that I am giving a most unsatis- 
factory picture of the Eastern and Middle- 
West cities. Our time was limited, and space 
forbids my giving anything but a cursory 
glance, a snapshot view, of their size and 
beauty. And, then, most tourists visit these 
places and the reading public have an inti- 
mate knowledge of them. 

We left Detroit, having been told at the 
Michigan Automobile Association that we 
should find excellent roads. As one promi- 
nent broker remarked, *'You can drive the 
length of the state on macadamized roads." 
Where were they? Surely not the way we 
went, the way described in the Blue Book. 
And let me state right here that we have 
never had much faith in that publication, and 
now what little we had is nihil! A few miles 
out of the city we struck a detour which last- 
ed nearly to Ann Arbor. We had left at six 
o'clock, and when we reached the university 
city all places to dine were closed. We did 



ON TO CHICAGO 3I 

not dine. We had pot-luck supper at a Greek 
restaurant, and started for Jackson to spend 
the night. Ann Arbor is a beautiful place, and 
the university buildings and fraternity houses 
are second to none of all we saw in other 
states. The road did not improve, and we ar- 
rived at Jackson very late and put up at the 
Otsego Hotel. It was crowded, and we were 
given the "sample rooms," in which the trav- 
eling-men displayed their goods on long ta- 
bles. We had comfortable beds and private 
baths, but you felt as if you were sleeping in 
a department store, with the counters cov- 
ered with white cloths. Otherwise, the Otse- 
go is a good hotel, and we were perfectly 
comfortable. By the time we were through 
breakfast, we asked to have a lunch put up, 
and were kindly but firmly told that it was 
nine-thirty, and the chef had gone home and 
locked up everything. We pleaded for some 
hot coffee and anything cooked that was left 
from breakfast. But no, not a sandwich nor a 
roll could we buy! We met this condition 
time after time. If v/e arrived at a hotel after 
eight o'clock in the evening, we were met 
with the same retort — "Chef gone and every- 
thing closed.'' A dozen times and more we 



32 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

were obliged to go out and forage for supper 
— ''due to the eight-hour law," we were al- 
ways told. As it was nearly ten o'clock, we 
trusted to luck to find a lunching-place en 
route. Fortune certainly favored us in the 
most unexpected way — not in our roads, 
which still were poor, but in the shape of two 
little girls on the wayside. As we were pass- 
ing through a hamlet called Smithfield — be- 
fore reaching Albion — we were attracted by 
two dainty girls with baskets of goodies 
waiting for us. Their names were Evelyn and 
Willetta Avery, and they proved to be fairy 
godmothers. Their mother owned the neigh- 
boring farm, and these children were spend- 
ing their vacation in supplying lunches to 
passers-by. Everything was done up in fresh 
napkins and was real home cooking. This is 
what we bought from them : a quart of fresh 
blueberries (which Toodles, in her joy, 
promptly upset in the tonneau, and we 
walked on blueberries for days!), fresh cake, 
pie, honey, hard-boiled eggs, tongue sand- 
wiches, hot bread and rolls, a pat of sweet 
butter, and oh ! such home-made pickles, rasp- 
berry jam (a pint glass), and a bottle of ice- 
cold spring water, an abundance for four 



ON TO CHICAGO 33 

hungry grown-ups, and all for $2.10. We gave 
them both liberal tips and they smiled and 
waved us out of sight. That was a banner 
luncheon, and the best but one on the trip. 

We stopped in the interesting city of Al- 
bion. The college was founded and endowed 
by General Fisk, of Civil War fame, whose 
only daughter, Mrs. P., is one of New York's 
most beautiful and prominent women. That 
afternoon about four we came to Battle Creek, 
and as the Doctor's eyes were troubling him, 
from the heat and dust, we drove to the san- 
atorium, where he could receive treatment. 
It is an immense place and beautifully kept 
up. We were sitting in the car outside, watch- 
ing the crowds of patients with their friends, 
when a number of wagons, like popcorn wag- 
ons, came into view, pushed about by the 
white-robed attendants. The wagon itself 
and the four uprights were covered with 
white cloth and festooned with fresh vines 
and flowers. In the center, hidden from view, 
was an ice-cream freezer, and young girls in 
white, carrying flowers, were dispensing ice- 
cream cones at five cents each. It was as pret- 
ty a sight as I ever saw. The carts were 
wheeled through the grounds and everyone, 



34 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

sick or well, indulged. It was our first intro- 
duction to ice-cream cones, but we acquired 
the habit; and thereafter our afternoon tea 
consisted of ice cream, generally bought at a 
soda-water fountain in some small town 
along our road. It may be fattening, but it is 
nourishing and refreshing. Even in the tiny 
hamlets on the plains of Montana we found 
good, rich ice cream. It is certainly an Ameri- 
can institution and a very palatable one. 

We had come ninety miles over bad roads, 
and it was i6o miles to Chicago, so we de- 
cided to stop at Paw Paw for the night. We 
drove through the town and inquired which 
was the best hotel — our usual question — and 
were told that they had two, but the Dyck- 
man House was first-class — a typical small 
country hotel, with little promise of comfort. 
We were shown into big, comfortable rooms 
with one private bath; but were told that 
^'supper was over." The manager was a typi- 
cal small-town person of importance, but had 
a kindly eye, and looked amenable to persua- 
sion. The others had given up hope; not so 
with me! Then and there I invented a "sob- 
story" that would have melted Plymouth 
Rock. It became our stock in trade, and many 



ON TO CHICAGO 35 

a supperless night we would have had with- 
out it. After praising up the town and his ho- 
tel, and saying that we had heard of its hos- 
pitality, and so forth; that we were strangers, 
and had come all the way from New York; 
that we were tired and hungry, and I really 
was not very well; and that the price was no 
consideration, etc., he walked out to the kitch- 
en and caught the cook with her hat on ready 
to depart, gave his orders, and in twenty min- 
utes we were doing full justice to a perfectly 
good supper. After w^e had finished, I went 
out into the summer kitchen and found a 
good-natured Irish woman, as round as she 
was pleasing, fanning herself. I gave her a 
dollar, thanked her for staying, and made a 
friend for life. 

Even in Michigan our New York license 
attracted much attention. When we came out 
of a hotel or store, a crowd of people had in- 
variably gathered about the car and were 
feeling the tires. The size seemed to astonish 
them. The fact that we had come from New 
York filled them with awe, and when, in fun, 
we said we were going to San Francisco, 
they were speechless! "Aw, gaw on!" or "By 
heck!" was all that they could exclaim. 



30 IT ■'might have been worse 

^^t last taste of Michigan roads was worse 
^^^/rtji the first. We went by the way of Benton 
^^arbor, with sandy detours and uninterest- 
^ing country, until we struck the strip of In- 
diana before coming into South Chicago. 
Our troubles were over for a long time. A 
breeze had come up from the lake, and we 
slept under blankets that night for the first 
time in two weeks. We were all familiar with 
Chicago, and we wished to stop out on the 
Lake Shore, if possible. We drove through 
the city, out on the North Shore Boulevard 
to the Edgewater Hotel, of which we had 
heard charming reports. A block below the 
hotel cars were parked by the dozens. It is 
built directly on the shore, with the most re- 
markable dining-room at the water's edge, 
like the deck of an ocean liner, filled with 
palms, flowers, and smartly dressed people, 
many in evening clothes. The tables were all 
reserved, and so were the rooms, two weeks 
in advance — this was the pleasant news that 
awaited us! Could they take us in the next 
day? ''No, possibly not for a week or more." 
No "sob-story" to help us here! But the 
clerks were obliging and advised our going 
about ten miles farther out, to the North 



ON TO CHICAGO 37 

Shore Hotel in Evanston, which v/e found 
delightful in every way — very near the lake, 
quiet, furnished in exquisite taste, and good 
food at reasonable prices. But even here we 
found the eight-hour law in force; we could 
not get a bite after eight o'clock. We went to 
half a dozen restaurants — all closed! In des- 
peration we went into what looked to be a 
candy store, and found they were closing up 
the cafe! They could serve nothing but ice 
cream and sodas. We asked to see the man- 
ager and told him our plight. He was an 
Eastern man, a long-lost brother. He said, 
"As you placed your order just before eight 
o'clock, of course we shall serve you." It was 
quite nine by this time. He kept his face 
straight, and we tried to do the same. That 
dinner certainly did touch the spot! It was 
the "Martha Washington Cafe," and certain- 
ly immortalized the gracious lady for all time 
for us. Later we went back to the Edgewater 
Hotel for our mail and to dine, and we were 
more charmed with it than before. 

We had come 1028 miles from New York. 
Our car had to be thoroughly cleaned, oiled, 
and looked over; so we were without it for 
two days. The street-car strike was on in full 



38 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

force, not a surface car moving in the city. 
Consequently, we walked, rested, and saw 
but little of the city. It was quite ten years 
since any of us had been there; in that time 
Chicago had grown and been so improved 
that we hardly knew it. If Pittsburgh people 
are proud of their city, Chicagoans are the 
originar'boosters." Nature has done so much 
for its location. Its system of parks and boule- 
vards is not equaled by any city. There is a 
natural, outspoken pride evinced by the peo- 
ple of the best class — not ashamed of a hum- 
ble beginning, but glorying in the vast im- 
portance of the commercial and financial life. 
To quote from the folder of the Yellowstone 
Trail, which we picked up here and followed 
without any trouble to St. Paul, Minnesota, 
"Nothing need be said about Chicago. Chi- 
cago is the heart of America and speaks for 
herself." Other cities may challenge this, but 
there is every evidence of its truth. In time, 
Chicago will give New York a good race; in 
fact, she is doing it now. 

Our genial Doctor left us here, much to 
our regret. We went on, a select party of 
three. 



THROUGH THE DAIRY COUNTRY 

i\ GOOD road from Plymouth Rock to Puget 
Sound." Thus reads the Yellowstone Trail 
folder. If you really believe a thing, you may 
be excused for stating it as a truth. The trust- 
ing soul who wrote that alluring statement 
has never been over the entire trail, or I am 
greatly mistaken. Credit must be given for 
the system of marking the trail. At every 
turn, right or left, the yellow disk is in plain 
sight. 

On leaving Chicago, we went through Lin- 
coln Park and up the Sheridan Road to Mil- 
waukee. The road is a wonderful boulevard, 
with beautiful homes and estates and glimp- 
ses of Lake Michigan, past the Great Lakes 
Naval Training Station, now the largest in 
the United States. We had heard much of 
Zion City. Driving down its main street was 
like a funeral. The houses were closed, the 
buildings seemed deserted, and the only evi- 
dences of life were two men, a horse and wag- 
on, and a stray dog! We found a good mac- 



40 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

adam road to Oshkosh from Milwaukee and 
many such stretches through Wisconsin. At 
times the road followed closely the shore of 
Lake Winnebago, and then would wind 
through fertile dairy country. Trainloads of 
butter and cheese are shipped from here each 
year, and high-bred dairy cattle are raised 
for the market. Was it not strange that we 
did not have Wisconsin cheese on the menu 
at any hotel in that state? Several times we 
asked for it, but no cheese was forthcoming. 
The first night we put up at Fond du Lac, 
at Irvine Hotel. It was fairly good, but a pal- 
ace compared with what we found the next 
night at Stevens Point — the Jacobs Hotel. 
This was our first uncomfortable experience 
— a third-rate house, with no private bath, 
hard beds in little tucked-up rooms, a bowl 
and pitcher with cold water and two small 
towels the size of napkins, and the most prim- 
itive table you could imagine. The weather 
had kept cool and clear, but the sandy roads 
with deep ruts were awful! As it had rained 
in the night, the clerk assured us next morn- 
ing that four cars were stuck in the road west 
of the town, and we had better not start. We 
asked him if there was a good hotel at Marsh- 



THROUGH THE DAIRY COUNTRY 4I 

field. "Good hotel! Well, you folks just wait 
till you see it! They actually have Brussels 
carpet on the floor of the dining-room! Good 
hotel, eh? Nothin' better this side of Chica- 
go!" The cars were lined up in the street 
waiting to start. The clouds looked heavy 
and threatening, and not a ray of blue sky. 
Everyone was talking to someone. The for- 
malities are discarded on such occasions. We 
fell into conversation v/ith a charming man, 
Mr. H., from Fargo, North Dakota. Later 
we found that he was the ex-governor, and 
his name was sufficient to get anything you 
wanted in the Northwest. He and his family 
were touring to New York; so we exchanged 
maps and experiences, and he gave us a list 
of towns and hotels that proved invaluable, 
with the kindly remark, "If you will show the 
hotel clerks this list with my name, I am sure 
you will be well taken care of." We certainly 
were — and more! — from there to Yellow- 
stone Park. 

We found the Blodgett Hotel at Marsh- 
field — with a really, truly carpet in the din- 
ing-room — a good hotel, clean and comfort- 
able. The next day we had two hundred 
miles to go to St. Paul, and were promised 



42 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

good roads. Colby, Eau Claire, and Chippe- 
wa Falls are all attractive towns. Wisconsin 
boasts of six thousand lakes. It certainly is a 
paradise for the huntsman and the angler — 
''The land with charm for every mile." The 
method of numbering the state highways is 
the best we have found. You simply can't 
lose your way. We, unfortunately, had sev- 
eral long detours and did not reach St. Paul 
until one a. m., a very sleepy trio, in a dis- 
reputable-looking car. 



VI 

CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 

We decided to take as little luggage as pos- 
sible. In the end, we found that we had more 
than ten people would need. Each of us had 
a large dress-suit case, a small handbag with 
toilet articles, an extra bag for soiled linen 
(which proved useful), two golf-bags, with 
umbrellas and rubbers (which were never 
used), a case of tennis-rackets and balls, a 
shawl-strap with a heavy rug, rain-coats and 
top-coats for cold weather, the lunch-ham- 
per, and a silk bag for hats. The tonneau was 
comfortably filled, with still room for two, 
and even three, people. The thermos-bottles 
were stowed away in the side-pockets, easy 
of access. All the maps were in the right- 
hand front pocket by the person sitting with 
the driver. We had an old rug which was so 
disreputable that no one would steal it; we 
had been on the point of throwing it away a 
dozen times, but after it came from the clean- 
ers we hadn't the heart to leave it behind. 
That old relic proved to be the joy of the 



44 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

trip. We sat on it when lunching on the road- 
side, used it to protect the car from the bags 
and golf-clubs, and when we had a puncture 
down it went under the car to avoid collect- 
ing all the dust of the road on my husband's 
clothes. We still have it, and consider the old 
veteran deserves a pension for life. My ad- 
vice — take an old rug! 

And our clothes : Of course, a silk or an al- 
paca dust-coat; linen soon shows soil and 
looks mussy. This applies to the ladies. I 
won't attempt to advise men, for they will 
wear what best suits them. We wore one- 
piece gowns of serge, and, when it was hot, 
voile or even gingham. We each had a silk 
afternoon frock, which would shake out and 
look presentable for dinner, a black evening 
gown for dress-up occasions, a half-dozen 
crepe de chine blouses, and a cloth suit. We 
could have done without the suits. They were 
used but once or twice. We all took heaps of 
under-linen, only to find that we could get 
one-day laundry service in any good hotel, 
and could buy almost anything in the cities, 
and even in the small towns. The color of our 
linen resembled coffee at times, but, aside 
from that unpleasant feature, we could keep 



CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 45 

clean and comfortable with no trouble. We 
each had a sport skirt, a sweater, shoes, a 
pair of evening pumps, a pair of heavy top- 
boots, and two pairs of Oxford ties, black and 
tan, with sensible heels. In driving, I soon 
found the long-vamp, pointed toe not only a 
nuisance, but dangerous, and used an old- 
fashioned, round-toed low shoe. Hats! There 
every woman is a law unto herself. We each 
had a good-looking hat in the hat-bag, which, 
after being tied to the rug-rail, sat on, 
smashed by the bags, and wet a few times, 
still kept our hats very presentable. Straw 
hats will break and be ruined. Those made of 
ribbon or black satin will withstand the 
weight of a ton of luggage and come out 
looking fairly decent. Wash gloves proved 
practical, also white Shetland veils. Toodles 
was swathed like an escaped harem beauty; 
but one good Shetland veil, well tied and 
pinned in, kept my sailor hat in place com- 
fortably, even when the top was down and I 
was driving. The hat with a brim is a neces- 
sity when the sun shines for weeks at a time. 
I did not wear motor goggles, but the others 
did. Through all the Western states we found 
the female population in khaki breeches and 



46 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

puttees, khaki blouses, and hats like a sun- 
bonnet or a cowboy's sombrero, and occa- 
sionally a coat to match, which was short and 
of a most unbecoming length. Often high tan 
boots were substituted for the puttees. It 
was a sensible costume, and well adapted to 
the country and life in the open that Western 
women lead. They all rode astride, wisely. 
Often we met parties of four in a Ford just 
hitting the high spots on the road. 

The farther we went into the real West, 
the West of the movies and the early days 
pictured by Bret Harte, we realized what 
part these Western women had played, and 
were still playing, in their unselfish, brave, 
industrious, vital lives, in the opening and de- 
veloping of that vast territory, and in mak- 
ing such a trip as ours comfortable, safe, and 
even possible. I think, if I ever take the trip 
again, I shall adopt khaki breeches, and send 
my petticoats by express to our destination. 
This reminds me that I have not spoken of 
our trunks. Nine out of ten people that we 
have met in San Francisco have asked, ''What 
became of your trunks, or didn't you have 
any?" Before leaving New York we sent, 
collect, by American Railway Express, a 



CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 47 

large wardrobe trunk, the usual steamer 
trunk, and a French hat-box to San Francis- 
co, ''Hold until claimed/' These were held 
for seven weeks, and the total expense, deliv- 
ered to our hotel, was $45.50 — not at all bad. 

No matter of what material your clothes 
are made, a long motor trip ruins them. It is 
a large expense to get them pressed, and a 
small electric iron answers the purpose. It 
takes up but little space — every small hotel 
is equipped with electricity — and you appear 
sans creases and wrinkles. Don't do as one 
friend did, who put it in her traveling case 
with her bottles. One good bump did the bus- 
iness, and when she took it out "the mess of 
tooth-powder, cold cream, sunburn lotion, 
and broken glass was enough to spoil my 
trip." Her stock was soon replenished. In 
every small town across the continent, with- 
out one exception, we found the Rexall drugs 
and articles for sale; even when the town 
failed to boast of a ten-cent store, Dr. Rexall 
was on hand. It struck us as very remark- 
able, and was most convenient many times. 

The one article that I regretted not bring- 
ing was a good camera. When all our friends 
said, "Of course, you will take a camera," my 



48 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

husband replied, that he wouldn't be both- 
ered with one; "they are a perfect nuisance." 
That may be true, and the camera did not go 
touring; but some incidents that occurred 
cannot be adequately pictured in words — one 
in particular, our encounter with bears! Of 
this I shall speak later. 

And now, of the car! I wished my husband, 
who had all the care of the car, to write his 
chapter. "Every man knows what to take, 
and how to care for his car, and there is no 
use giving any advice.'' Perhaps he will — he 
has! 

BY T. G. M. (under PROTEST) 

The authoress demands that I, a mere hub- 
by, include a few chirps of advice and what- 
nots to the intrepid masculine persuasion 
who drives his own car and contemplates the 
trip across. You will first undoubtedly think 
of wearing apparel, and pass those attractive 
window displays in your home city, with 
Claude in a lovely green plush hunting suit 
and Myrtle in a rakish hat, leather coat, and 
white shoes! Don't succumb, but take your 
old "comfy" gray golf or outing suit, with 
extra trousers, two caps, a medium-weight 



CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 49 

overcoat, a stout pair of driving-gloves, a 
half-dozen golf shirts v^ith short sleeves 
(these are a joy for hot-weather driving and 
working around the car), a long pongee dust- 
coat, and one extra suit for emergencies. 
Your "soup and fish'' may better be left at 
home, unless you plan a stay in some city. 
One scarcely ever sees evening dress about 
the hotels in the West, especially among tour- 
ists, and never among their distant cousins, 
the "Fordists." 

For the car, I should carry a wire cable, a 
tow-line, a spool of annealed wire, six extra 
spark-plugs, two spare mounted shoes, an 
extra tube, a valve, and a valve-spring. Be 
provided with an engine-driven tire-pump, a 
roll of tape, a tube-repair kit (Lowe's is a 
good one), and a twelve-inch Stillson pipe 
wrench, which you may find a life-saver in an 
hour of despair. Of course, you will have oil 
and grease-guns, a pound of grease, and plen- 
ty of soft old cloths (which are preferable to 
waste), and your regular equipment of tools. 

Our first puncture was a nightmare. The 
car was heavily loaded with fourteen pieces 
of baggage, four spare tires, etc., and it taxed 
my vocabulary and my moral and physical 



50 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

strength to raise that right rear wheel. Next 
day I acquired a T. C. (or traveHng compan- 
ion) that never left me — a nice scraggly four- 
by-six wood block about thirty inches long, 
chamfered at one end. Of course, the next 
puncture was also a rear- wheel tire — this 
time the left one; but here was where T. C. 
came in. I wedged the chamfered end of T. C. 
under and ahead of said tire, started the en- 
gine, and advanced the car until it rode the 
block, then put the jack under the rear axle 
and took the car-weight off the block, pulled 
out the block, changed the tire, pushed the 
car off the jack — and presto! there it was, 
ready for the road, and not even a hair 
mussed. T. C. is my friend ! 

By all means acquire honestly (surrep- 
titiously, if you must) a waterproof khaki 
tarpaulin about eight feet by five. You will 
find this invaluable to cover the spot where 
you must kneel or lie to fix things when Old 
Father Fate hands you a puncture or other 
kill-joy. 

Cord tires are also worth your while; they 
not only wear much better, and stand up un- 
der heat and sand, but you can safely carry a 
low tire-pressure. Our car weighed close to 



CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 5I 

five thousand pounds, but we carried only- 
fifty -five to sixty pounds pressure. This 
makes for comfortable riding, reduces your 
chances of a broken spring, and eases the 
pain when bucking the deadly chuck-holes 
that look so harmless but feel much worse 
than you anticipate — yes, much worse ! 

We preferred the gas sold by the service 
stations of reliable oil companies, and, in the 
main, found it much better and cheaper than 
the average garage gas — and, between 
friends, more accurately measured. 

The tire-service stations are provided with 
handy local maps, and between them and the 
garages you can get the best information 
relative to the roads in general, and particu- 
larly detours, the motorists' bugbear. Road 
conditions often change entirely in a few 
days, and, outside of guiding you along the 
main traveled routes, the Blue Book ordinar- 
ily is not of much assistance. For setting-up 
exercises, every morning I tested my tire- 
pressure, turned down all grease-cups, looked 
over steering mechanism, rear axle, drive- 
shaft, brakes and spring shackles, and, as a 
result, we came through with fiying colors, 
without the slightest accident, and our car* 



52 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

runs better now than when we started, 4154 
miles away. 

It may be of interest to speak further of 
the gas, for, as an item of expense, and your 
greatest necessity, you have to consider it. 
We saw no Socony gas after leaving Chica- 
go; the Red Crown gas had taken its place. 
There were a dozen other makes — Union, 
Iroquois, Shell, Associated, etc., ranging in 
price from twenty to forty cents a gallon. 
Every town and many grocery-stores on the 
road could supply you. As our tank held 
twenty-one gallons, not once did we have to 
carry extra gas. The longest stretch was 
seventy miles without gas for sale. Of course, 
you get less mileage in the high altitudes, 
and the radiator needs to be filled several 
times a day. 

We carried an extra can of water, with our 
drinking-bottles filled, through the highest 
mountain country and in the desert; other- 
wise, the town pump was easily found. We 
had four spare shoes, but used only one. Two 
punctures from N.ew York to California is a 
record to bring joy to any motor heart. Twice 
we picked up nails, and once some joker 
stuck a long pin into a tire. Dr. B., of Bronx- 



CLOTHES, LUGGAGE, AND THE CAR 53 

ville, New York, advised us to have a Yale 
lock put on either side of the hood of the en- 
gine, remarking, "Those rubes in country 
garages are mighty inquisitive, and have no 
love for city cars. I have had my carburetor 
monkeyed with many times." We took his 
advice and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. 
In the East we paid $1.50 for a night's stor- 
age in a garage. Through the West we have 
paid as low as fifty cents. Our total mileage, 
the amount of gas and oil used, and the cost 
of each, with the garage expenses, I will give 
later. 

I must add that, except for cleaning the 
spark-plugs, we had no engine trouble, and 
the car arrived in perfectly good shape in 
California. 



VII 

THE TWIN CITIES AND TEN THOUSAND LAKES 

August 6th and 7th we spent in St. Paul, at 
the first-class St. Paul Hotel — a perfect joy! 
Our stay here was filled with interest. The 
capitol building is a noble pile. Summit Av- 
enue boasts of many beautiful homes, but the 
business life is fast overtaking it. Minneapo- 
lis is such a close neighbor that we could not 
tell where one city began and the other left 
off. Here cousins took us to the Athletic Club 
for lunch, in as beautiful a cafe as we have 
seen. A bounteous luncheon was served for 
sixty cents that we would have paid at least 
two dollars for in New York. This was our 
last feast on broiled whitefish. As we were all 
chatting over our trip, a crash as of broken 
china brought us to a pause. "What in Heav- 
en's name is that?" we exclaimed. "Oh, just 
the boys in the 'training' cafe, having a hurry- 
up lunch," laughed our host. On the many 
floors men were spending their noon-hour 
exercising and keeping themselves fit. 

We drove out to the famous summer re- 



TWIN CITIES AND THE LAKES 55 

sort, Lake Minnetonka, picturesque and 
edged with lovely summer homes. Near by 
were theMinnehahaFalls,known to allLong- 
fellow lovers, and the Fort Snelling reserva- 
tion, where the sturdy pioneers defended 
their lives in the old round tower and block- 
house. By far the most attractive spot we 
visited was Christmas Lake, seventeen miles 
out of town, where the Radisson Inn nestles 
in the woods, quite hidden from the highway. 
No private villa could be more lovely. In the 
large dining-room, which was really a sun- 
parlor, each table had its own color-scheme, 
with vines and wild flowers. Plants, ferns, 
vines, and flowers growing everywhere in the 
most original baskets and boxes made of 
twigs, bark, or moss. We all stood exclaim- 
ing, like a lot of children, ''Isn't it adorable?" 
— "Oh, my dear, do look at this Indian rug!" 
— "Where did they get this willow furni- 
ture?" — "Altman never had such exquisite 
cretonnes!" — "Let's give up the trip and 
stop here!" — and so on. We were told that 
the table was in keeping with the house, and 
that the place was full all season. This was 
another high spot on the trip. 

Still another pleasure was in store for us-^ 



56 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

we were to play golf and dine at the Town 
and City Club. The club is situated between 
the two cities, near the banks of the Missis- 
sippi River. We drove past before we realized 
that it was not a private estate. Stopping a 
young man, we asked where the club was. 
"Got me stuck. Missis; never heard of it.'' A 
small boy of seven came up, and, with a with- 
ering glance which took us all in, waved his 
arm, saying, "Right before your eyes!" We 
drove through lovely grounds to the club- 
house. Such gorgeous old trees! — hedges 
that made you think of Devonshire, lawns 
like velvet, and a riot of color in the beds and 
borders — every flowering shrub and plant 
you could dream of. Of course, the links were 
fine, and the twilight lasted until nearly nine 
o'clock. We had ordered dinner in advance; 
so by a quarter to nine we were seated at our 
table, with faultless appointments, enjoying 
such a good dinner, and watching the sky- 
line of Minneapolis, with its church spires 
and towering buildings, fade in the afterglow 
of the sunset. Not one of us spoke as the twi- 
light deepened and the stars came out; we 
went out on the lawn and saw the new har- 
vest moon through the trees — a bit of Na- 



TWIN CITIES AND THE LAKES 57 

ture's fairyland, the memory of which will 
always stay with us. 

Here we left the Yellowstone Trail and 
followed the National Parks Highway north 
to Fargo, North Dakota, 265 miles ; winding 
in and out over good roads through a myriad 
of lakes — ten thousand, we were told — in 
Minnesota. Every mile of the way, as far as 
the eye could see, were acres of potatoes, 
corn, and wheat, fertile and green. If you 
want to visualize Frank Norris's books and 
understand how w^e can feed starving Eu- 
rope, motor through this state. It was har- 
vest-time. Great tractors were snorting like 
live creatures, hundreds of men on the big 
ranches were "bringing in the sheaves,'' the 
country was alive with action, and the world 
was to reap the benefit of the toil and endless 
energy of these sturdy men. You have never 
seen our country until you have traveled 
through this great grain-belt. Every small 
town had two or three grain elevators. There 
were beautiful fields of alfalfa, a mass of 
bloom with its bluish purple flower as sweet 
as honey. As we came near these fields, the 
air was always cool. We couldn't account for 
it; but it is a strange fact that the air is con- 



58 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

siderably cooler when you near an alfalfa 
field. Can you see the picture? Lakes on 
every side, as blue as great sapphires, spark- 
ling in the sun, the road lined with the wild 
sunflowers, often forming a golden hedge on 
either side for miles, the blue mass of color 
of the alfalfa fields, and above it the green 
corn and golden wheat. The magpies were in 
flocks, and the seagulls were skimming over 
the inland lakes, hundreds of miles from any 
large body of water, and hundreds more of 
them were resting on the shores. Strange, 
was it not? Through the West we have noted 
the absence of many birds, especially in Mon- 
tana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. But here the 
crops were so abundant that the little song- 
sters ''had first whack at the grain," as my 
husband remarked. He was the bird-man of 
the party, and when he was driving at a top- 
notch speed or turning a hairpin curve he 
would calmly ask, ''Did you girls see that 
blue heron?'' 

Alexandria, and the hotel of the same 
name, were comfortable beyond our hopes. 
The next day we passed through Fergus 
Falls, where the cyclone of June 22d had 
demolished the better part of the town. It 



TWIN CITIES AND THE LAKES 59 

had been a thriving, attractive place in the 
heart of the grain-belt, with fine buildings 
and pretty homes. Now, less than two months 
later, the wreck and debris were appalling. 
The wind had wrought strange sights. We 
saw a sewing-machine in the top of a neigh- 
bor's tree, festooned with bedding, petticoats, 
and a bird-cage. Houses were turned over as 
if they had been toys; others were crushed to 
kindling. Here a small tree or a chicken-coop 
would be intact, and a building five feet away 
would be demolished. We stopped off for 
lunch in a small cafe in the part of the town 
that had escaped the gale. The people were 
talking of nothing else. The whole country- 
side had driven in to see it, to take the suffer- 
ers home, or to render assistance. The wait- 
ress paid no attention to our order — just 
talked."Why, lady, it was the awfullest thing 
you ever heard tell on! One moment we were 
all sitting at our work, and then we heard a 
roar like a mad bull, or thunder, and the sky 
got so black that you couldn't see across that 
counter. Windows smashed in, and this 
house shook like jelly. Folks were blown 
down that street like old newspapers. Scared? 
My Gawd! we just crawled under the coun- 



6o IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

ter and prayed ! The door was blown in and 
the front window smashed. A Httle kid was 
blown across that street and straight through 
that broken glass. My maw's house was 
shook to pieces. Maw was cookin', and she 
and the stove went off together. Paw was 
feedin' the cattle; when we found him he was 
lyin' in the next lot with a cow a-lyin' on top 
of him and a milkpail a-coverin' of his head. 
Most everyone got cut by the glass or broke 
an arm or leg, tryin' to hold on to somethin'. 
The piany in the schoolhouse was took up 
and planted in a street two blocks away not 
hurt a bit. It sounds just beautiful now. Some 
folks I know had their two cats and three 
dogs killed, and the canary was a-singin' like 
mad when they found the house in the end of 
the garden. The wire fences were the worst; 
they just wound themselves up like yarn.'' 
Many others told us similar weird tales. We 
left that town, already being rebuilt, a sober 
party. 

'T wonder what would happen to us if we 
should meet such a cyclone," said Toodles. 

"I think we would 'blow in' to lunch with 
our friends in Boston," mused the bird-man. 

He has given me this list of birds that we 



TWIN CITIES AND THE LAKES 6l 

saw through the West : Mudhens, bluebirds, 
bluejays, robins, ospreys, cranes, loons, terns, 
the Canada goose, song-sparrows, meadow- 
larks, hawks, wild swans, woodpeckers, ori- 
oles, wild doves, and others. Later we saw 
sagehens and eagles. 



VIII 

MILLIONS OF GRASSHOPPERS 

We had wired to our cousins, Mr. and Mrs. 
H., of Fargo, to make a reservation for our 
party, which they did at the Gardner Hotel. 
We found a big comfortable hotel, with 
large rooms, good table, and excellent ser- 
vice. We enjoyed our "stop off' of two days 
here more than in any other city on our trip. 
Fargo spells hospitality and "pep." Our 
greeting was, "What can we do for you?" 

"Find the Packard service station, give us 
some home-cooking, and let us play golf and 
tennis." 

"There are only two Packard cars in town, 
but the manager of the garage owns one and 
can help you out." 

He did — kind, obliging person! Our sec- 
ond request was granted to the full. Never 
did fried chicken and creamed potatoes cov- 
ered with gravy taste so good. We went back 
the next day and finished up the rest of the 
chicken. After driving about this charming 
"up-to-tomorrow" Western city, we went out 



MILLIONS OF GRASSHOPPERS 63 

to the Country Club and the links, and met 
many truly delightful people. 

Western people in the same walk of life as 
your friends at home are traveled, cultured, 
broad-minded, most interesting people. I was 
especially impressed by the women. They 
think for themselves on the public questions 
of the hour, and voice their opinions in no 
uncertain terms. As Philip Gibbs said in his 
article in Harper's- ("Some People I met in 
America"), "Desperately earnest about the 
problems of Peace, intrigued to the point of 
passion about the poHcy of President Wilson, 
divided hopelessly in ideals and convictions, 
so that husbands and wives had to declare a 
No Man's Land between their conflicting 
views.'' It is so in our family. My brother has 
expressed it aptly: "President Wilson is a 
state of mind. You are all for him, or not at 
all." But Heaven help me to keep politics out 
of this peaceful narrative! 

We found many golfers ahead of us. Mrs. 
W., the chairman of the house committee, 
and especial hostess of the day, played with 
us. She played, as all Western women enter 
into everything, with enthusiasm. The course 
was flat, easy, and of nine holes. 



64 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

But the grasshoppers! I had seen plenty 
of them on the trip while going through 
the farming country. They would jump into 
the car, take a ride on the hood or windshield, 
get on your veil or down your neck, or collect 
in family parties on the luggage or in your 
lap; but that was utter isolation compared to 
the crop on those links. The seventeen-year 
locust had nothing on these grasshoppers ! On 
the fairway, when you hit your ball, hundreds 
would fly up in a cloud and your ball was lost 
to sight. You walked on a carpet of them. It 
reminded you of "the slaughter of the inno- 
cents. ''Your clothes were covered with them. 
When I sat down at the third tee, I heard a 
crunching noise, unlike anything I ever ex- 
perienced. Mrs. W. called out — alas! too late 
— "Oh, you mustn't sit down until you shake 
the grasshoppers out of your skirts. You will 
ruin your clothes." That white satin skirt has 
been boiled, parboiled, dry-cleaned, and hung 
in the sun, but the back looks bilious and 
pea-green in spots! When I got back to the 
hotel, I found them inside of my blouse and 
under-linen, and even in my hair and shoes. 
It is fortunate that they did not bite, or some- 
one else would be writing this tale. 



MILLIONS OF GRASSHOPPERS 65 

After real afternoon tea, with toast, hot 
biscuits, and sandwiches (not our ice-cream 
cones), we drove back to the city and dined 
and talked until the lights were put out in 
the hotel and the elevator man had gone to 
sleep. We were told of the fine roads through 
North Dakota, "but not in bad weather; then 
you will have to reckon with the gumbo." 
*'Gumbo" is described by Webster as "soup, 
composed of okra, tomatoes, etc.'' But that 
learned gentleman never drove after a rain- 
storm in North Dakota. 

The next morning the sky looked threaten- 
ing, but we started out for Jamestown, one 
hundred miles away. All went well until 
noon, when a gentle drizzle set in, and we 
put up the top, stopped under a big tree, had 
our lunch, and waited until the supposed 
shower was over. Farther west it had 
poured; we noticed that the cars coming in 
were covered with mud, and concluded that 
they had come over country roads. Surely 
not the National Parks Highway! So down 
went the top, and off we started in a wet at- 
mosphere, but not really raining. The chains 
had not been disturbed since they were com- 
fortably stowed away on leaving New York. 



66 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

One man advised us to put them on, but with 
a superior don't-believe-we-will-need-them 
air we left our tree shelter. He called out after 
us, "Say, strangers, you don't know what 
you all are getting into/' We didn't, but we 
jolly soon found out ! In ten minutes we had 
met gumbo, and were sliding, swirling, floun- 
dering about in a sea of mud ! I will try to 
describe it. A perfectly solid (apparently) 
clay road can become as soft as melted but- 
ter in an hour. Try to picture a narrow road, 
with deep ditches, and just one track of ruts, 
covered with flypaper, vaseline, wet soap, 
molasses candy (hot and underdone), mire, 
and any other soft, sticky, slippery, hellish 
mess that could be mixed — and even that 
would not be gumbo ! 

"Thank God for the ruts !" we devoutedly 
exclaimed. If you once got out of the ruts, 
your car acted as if it were drunk. It slid, 
zigzagged, slithered, first headed for one 
ditch, and then slewed across the road. It 
acted as if bewitched. We had passed several 
cars abandoned in the ditch, and those ahead 
of us, even with chains on, were doing a new 
version of a fox trot. The road grew worse, 
the mire deeper. The ruts were now so deep 



MILLIONS OF GRASSHOPPERS 67 

that we just crawled along, and, to prevent 
getting stalled, we pulled out of them. In a 
shorter time than it takes to write it, our left 
front wheel was down in the ditch and the 
car lying across the road, and stuck fast. 
That was all that prevented us from being 
ditched. There we were, unable to move. We 
had not tried to walk in gumbo. That was an 
added experience. All three of us got out to 
see what could be done. It would be impos- 
sible to jack the car up there and put on the 
chains; the jack would have sunk out of 
sight. And no car could pass us. Your feet 
stuck in the gumbo so that when you pulled 
up one foot a mass of mire as large as a mar- 
ket-basket stuck to it, or your shoe came off, 
and you frantically slid and floundered 
around until you got it on again. We thought 
of a dozen clever things to do, if we could 
only have walked. There was a farmhouse 
half a mile ahead where no doubt we could 
have hired a team to pull us out. But how 
could we get there? My sympathies are all 
with the fly caught on sticky flypaper! In a 
short time, a Dodge car came up back of us, 
a man driving it, with his wife, his son, a boy 
of fifteen, and a small girl. Being a light car 



68 • IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

in comparison, and having chains on, they 
fared better; but they could not pass. They 
offered to pull us back onto the road. Fortu- 
nately v^e had brought a wire cable with us. 
This was attached to both cars, and then both 
tried to back. Did we budge? No such luck! 
All hands got to work, sliding around like 
drunken sailors, and filled in back of our 
wheels with stones, sticks, cornstalks, and 
dry grass. After being stuck there just one 
hour, we got back onto the road and into the 
ruts, and slowly we crawled up to the top of 
a hill, where some guiding angel had scat- 
tered ashes and sand. We got to a dry, grassy 
spot, where a sadder and wiser driver put on 
the chains. How did we get there, Toodles 
and I ? Those blessed Dodge people invited us 
to stand on their running-boards while they 
crawled up the hill. Later we overtook them 
having tire troubles, and we were glad to be 
able to return their kindness. The next lovely 
job was to clean our shoes. Nothing can stick 
worse than gumbo, and we had been soaked 
in it. Needless to say that our shoes were 
ruined, but we were lucky it was not the car. 
So, with care, and crawling about five 
miles an hour, still slipping and sliding like 



MILLIONS OF GRASSHOPPERS 69 

eels, we covered the forty miles into James- 
town. The hotel dining-room was closed, and 
we had supper in a Chinese restaurant, then 
went to have our shoes cleaned in what had 
been before July ist a typical Western sa- 
loon. It was filled with miners and cowboys 
playing billiards, and a villainous automatic 
piano playing rag-time. We sat up in the 
chairs while a "China-boy" dug at the gum- 
bo, now hard as stone. One Westerner stood 
there taking us all in, and drawled, *'You 
folks must have struck gumbo." We had; 
but then again — "It might have been worse." 



IX 



THE BAD LANDS "nATURE's FREAKIEST MOOD" 



Jtrom now on we experienced the real 
thrills, the discomforts, and the wonders of 
our trip. Will the Eastern people (or the rest 
of our country) ever realize the debt of grati- 
tude that we owe to those early pioneers — 
the men who blazed the trails across the wil- 
derness, suffering every privation, facing in- 
conceivable dangers, and many dying of cold 
and starvation? As we studied our map and 
saw those hundreds of miles ahead of us, 
through the bad lands, over the dry Montana 
plains, through the desert, and over the 
Rocky Mountains, I admit that it seemed like 
theendof theworld, anda million miles from 
home — almost a foolhardy undertaking! 
Then we felt ashamed of ourselves. With a 
good car, and all of us in prime condition, we 
left old gumbo and fears behind, and made a 
fresh start. The big towns are one hundred 
miles apart. Governor H. had told us not to 
stop in Bismarck, a fine big city, but to go 
across the Little Missouri River to Mandan, 



THE BAD LANDS 7I 

sixteen miles farther on. Bismarck's fine ho- 
tels and cement pavements were a great 
temptation to stop, but our hopes were more 
than realized. This river, like all of these 
Western rivers, once navigable by big boats, 
was so low that teams were driving across in 
many places. When we reached the ferry we 
found a tiny steamer with paddle-wheels at 
the stern waiting for us. It held two small 
cars beside ours. On the other side a cordu- 
roy road had been built out over what had 
been the bed of the river at least a quarter of 
a mile, so that the ferry could land. The rest 
of the way was through pine woods. 

Mandan is a beautiful city, with the new 
Lewis and Clark Hotel, owned by Governor 
H. It was crowded, but when we showed the 
clerk Governor H.'s signature we were given 
his private suite. Remember that we had been 
coming over the plains for a hundred miles, 
and you can share our joy to walk into a 
Fifth Avenue hotel, with a Ritz-Carlton suite 
to revel in. This was where extremes met. It 
was wonderful that it was so beautiful. It 
was really more wonderful that it was there 
at all. 

The next day we went through another 



^2. IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

hundred miles of cattle and grain ranches. 
We were told that these towns, a hundred 
miles apart, had been trading-posts and stage- 
stops in the early days. Dickinson, Glendive, 
Miles City, and Billings, Montana, are all 
fine, thriving cities — excellent modern hotels, 
wide paved streets, fine churches, stores, of- 
fice buildings, and theaters, not overlooking 
the movie houses. In passing, I wish to speak 
of the movies — a national, educational insti- 
tution, to be reckoned with. If we were not 
too dead tired after a scrub, change of 
clothes, and dinner, we went to a movie and 
saw excellent pictures and the world's doings 
to date. Usually there were plenty of electric 
fans, and always one big "paddle'' fan outside 
the front entrance. This we found the case 
with banks, office buildings, and shops. 
(Solve that if you can!) In many dozens of 
canaries were singing a jubilee. There was 
always a large clock in full view of the audi- 
ence — another sensible idea. These cities 
were equipped with every modern device and 
invention. They claimed your admiration and 
deserved your unstinted praise. It was al- 
most impossible to believe that the next 
morning, ten minutes after you left the pave- 



THE BAD LANDS 73 

ments, you would again be out on the prai- 
ries, and perhaps meet no one for hours. 

At Dickinson, North Dakota, we found the 
St. Charles Hotel very good. We had been 
told to have lunch the next day in Medora, 
at the Rough Riders Hotel, one of the few 
buildings left of the early cowboy days. The 
town is nothing — a new school and store and 
a handful of old buildings. It is quite near 
the ranch where Colonel Roosevelt lived for 
two years. They instantly tell you that with 
real pride, for these people loved the man as 
they knew him. Like the buffalo, the pictur- 
esque cowboy is almost extinct. On the big 
cattle ranches we saw near cowboys — boys in 
their teens herding the cattle, and some ordi- 
nary, dirty-looking men on horses. There 
were half a dozen men eating noon dinner at 
the hotel(?), a tumble-down old building 
about as romantic as any old woodshed. One 
grizzly old fellow was pointed out as having 
been a guide for the Colonel. The place was 
dirty, the food impossible, greasy and cold, 
and the few bullet-holes in the far-famed bar 
were not sufficient to make this member of 
the party rave over the place. It seemed like 
a travesty, or a ghost of some former exist- 



74 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

ence. You may infer that we did not care for 
Medora! 

For the next hour we climbed steadily up, 
the roads growing narrow and rocky and full 
of chuck-holes. Everything that is rough and 
bad going in the Far West is "chucky," and 
we were soon to get acquainted with real 
chuck-holes. Presently we came out on a pla- 
teau, and before us lay the Bad Lands of 
North Dakota. You may read of them, see 
pictures of them, or see them from a train, 
but you have never really seen their wonder, 
their grotesquely beautiful grandeur, until 
you stand in their midst as we did. High 
cliffs, deep canyons, queer formations of 
stone and earth that look like great castles or 
human heads. Again they resemble mush- 
rooms of mammoth size, in all colors — gray, 
pink, orange, black, greens of a dull hue (not 
from the verdure, for there is none to speak 
of), yellows, and even purplish and chalky 
white. Here again you can see the outline of 
some giant creature, as if it had been carved 
in a prehistoric age. We are told that the sea 
once covered these lands. You can plainly 
see the ridges, like a rock on the ocean shore 
where the water has receded. I suppose they 



THE BAD LANDS 75 

are called the Bad Lands because they are 
arid and nothing will grow. They are the 
wonderlands of this country — geological 
wonders, left from some glacial period be- 
fore the foot of man trod the earth. No pen 
can adequately describe that scene; no brush 
could do justice to its weird beauty. The still- 
ness of death reigned. Not a bird or a living 
creature did we see. The way winds around 
these strange cliffs, now up a steep incline, 
where you look down at the road below, 
again in the bottom of a ravine or chuck- 
hole, and you wonder how you could drive 
the car either down or up again. 

"Did you ever see anything like this, any- 
where?'' 

"No, but it looks like what I imagine the 
bottom of hell must look like." 

All that day we drove in and out, with an 
ever-changing panorama of fantastic shapes 
and colors. We were awed, thrilled to our 
very marrow, and even now, weeks later, as 
I write of it, I realize that my hands are cold. 
Believe me, my friends, this is the acid test 
of driving. If you qualified, well and good; 
but if you lost your nerve or your head — a 
long good-night, and a perfectly good funer- 



"^6 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

al! Glendive, Montana, and the comfortable 
Jordan Annex looked human and mighty 
good to us that night. We all admitted that 
we were scared half to death. But, oh, the 
wonderandmajesty of that sight! We blessed 
our good car, we blessed our Maker, and we 
slept as if we had been drugged. 



X 

THE DUST OF MONTANA 

Jloor Montana! Burned, scorched to ashes 
from four summers of drought, and no rain 
in six months! Everywhere the people told 
us the same story. The rivers and streams 
v^ere dry as bones. "Don't stop here for v^a- 
ter'' v^as a familiar sign. We met hundreds 
of families driving out, in old ''prairie-schoon- 
ers,'' with all their household furniture and 
their cattle. These poor souls had to find wa- 
ter for their cattle and themselves. They had 
tried to raise crops, and were literally driven 
out. The children looked pinched and starved. 
The women and men were the color of leath- 
er, tanned by the scorching sun of the plains, 
the dust, and the dry, hot winds. They had 
lost everything. Their faces were pathos per- 
sonified. It wrung your heart to see them. 
We always slowed down and waved to them, 
and often stopped and talked. It was rare to 
get a smile from even the children. When 
we would give some little kiddie an orange, 
it was the pathetic mother who tried to smile. 



yS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

Before we had covered the four hundred 
miles across the state, our faces were burned, 
our lips so dry and cracked that they bled, 
and our eyes nearly burned out of our heads. 
Yet we had but a few days of it, and they had 
suffered for four summers! At night we 
would soak our hands and faces in coldcream, 
but the next night they were quite as bad. 
The dust was from six to eight inches deep, 
and the roads were either through sand or 
chucky. We know now why Lohr named his 
song "My Little Gray Home in the West.'' 
It could not possibly have been any other 
color. A dozen times we thought our springs 
were gone. The road looked like a level 
stretch of dust; then down you would go to 
the bottom of a chuck-hole with a thud that 
made your teeth chatter. 

The cattle looked as starved as the people. 
We came to one valley that had been irri- 
gated, and for a mile or so the crops were 
green. The ditch was full of water — real wel 
water. Horses and cows, dogs and people 
were standing in it. We filled our radiator 
and bottles and laved our hands and faces. 
Germs or no germs, we drank our fill. In half 
an hour or less your throat and mouth would 



THE DUST OF MONTANA 79 

be as dry as ashes, and your thirst was insa- 
tiable. We found that fruit, especially oran- 
ges and pears, quenched the thirst better 
than water; so we always kept plenty of fruit 
in the car. The going was so bad that we did 
not reach Miles City until late. After leaving 
Fargo, each morning we had taken the pre- 
caution to wire ahead for reservations, al- 
ways adding "driving," so, if we were belated, 
the rooms would still be held for us. We had 
been told that the Olive Hotel at Miles City 
was the only poor hotel on the route. Every- 
one had given it a black eye. We had men- 
tioned it to the manager at the Jordan Annex 
in Glendive. ''I think you will find it very 
comfortable. Our company has taken it over 
and refurnished it." When we were sending 
our usual morning wire, he very politely said 
that it would be his pleasure to notify them 
of our coming. 

To digress for a moment — the people of 
Montana pride themselves on their universal 
courtesy to strangers. Time and again, we 
had people say, ''You have found our people 
polite and obliging?" — "Yes; they are kind- 
ness itself" — and they were. 

When we reached the Olive Hotel we were 



8o IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

agreeably surprised. Everything was clean 
and comfortable, looking like Paradise after 
the dust and scorching sun of the plains. We 
were having our lunches put up by the hotel 
each morning, as there was absolutely noth- 
ing decent en route (shades of Medora!). I 
asked for the manager, Mr. Murphy. 

"We shall be glad to put you up a lunch/' 
he said. "What would you like?" 

"Anything but Jiam sandwiches. We have 
been so fed up on them that we can't look a 
pig in the face for fear we will see a family 
resemblance." Then I added, "May the bread 
be cut thin, and buttered?" 

He laughed and assured us that it would 
be "all right." Right! Ye gods, we had a 
feast! Oh, how we have blessed dear Mr. 
Murphy! May his shadow never grow less! 
As we were starting in the morning the head 
waitress came out with the lunch neatly done 
up, saying, "Mr. Murphy has had some ex- 
tras put in. We like Easterners and try to 
please tourists." We paid the modest price 
of $2.50 (for three people) and decided to 
curb our curiosity until noon. This was a real 
occasion, and just the proper spot must be 
found for our party. Some days we had driv- 



THE DUST OF MONTANA 8l 

en many miles to find a clump of trees to 
lunch under. Today we went ten miles and 
never even saw a tree — the deadly monotony 
of the endless plains — heat, dust, sand, sage- 
brush the color of ashes, and only a jolly little 
prairie-dog scurrying to his hole or a hawk 
flying overhead. Not a tree — not even a big 
bush to give shade! We asked some ranchers 
where they got wood for fuel. ''There ain't 
no wood. Every fellow digs his coal in his 
own backyard." It sounded simple, and I was 
glad to hear that nature had provided some 
compensations for the farmer, whose life at 
the best is not all "beer and skittles.'' 

On we drove until one o'clock — and still no 
trees! A wail from Toodles: "What about 
having lunch in the car?" There was a bend 
in the road over the top of a hill. "I have a 
hunch that there will be a tree around the 
bend," ventured the bird-man. There was ! — 
just one big, glorious cottonwood tree that 
would shelter a drove of cattle, and the only 
tree in sight on those plains as far as the eye 
could see. Out came the faithful old rug and 
the hamper — and then we unpacked the 
lunch! Three juicy melons, a whole broiled 
chicken for each one, thin bread and butter, 



S2 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

a jar of potato salad, fresh tomatoes, three 
jars of marmalade, eggs, crisp lettuce, pic- 
kles, and the best chocolate-cake I ever tast- 
ed, besides peaches, pears, and hot coffee. 
You may think we were a lot of greedy pigs, 
but that was the banner lunch of the trip. 
May Mr. Murphy never go hungry! He has 
made three friends for life. 

Miles City is the last and best of the repre- 
sentative "cow-towns'' of early days. The an- 
nual "round-up,'' a celebration of frontier 
days, is usually held on the 4th of July. Here 
our watches went back an hour. We were 
now in the land of silver dollars. It had been 
some years since we had seen them in New 
York. Out here, when you had a bill changed, 
you received nothing but silver dollars. A bit 
heavy, but all right, if you had enough of 
them. 

That night we reached Billings. We had 
gone through some fertile ranches where the 
irrigation system had turned an arid waste 
of sand into fields of green crops. The coun- 
try improved, as we neared this "Metropolis 
of Midland Empire," as they term it, the cen- 
ter of the sugar-beet industry. Wherever we 
saw crops, there the sugar-beet flourished. 



THE DUST OF MONTANA 83 

They must raise many thousands of tons of 
them. The fair grounds and elaborate build- 
ings are of interest. It is a real city rising out 
of the plains, like a living monument to the 
pioneers, men and women. The Northern 
Hotel was the finest we had seen since leav- 
ing the Twin Cities. We rested up for a day, 
had the car cleaned and oiled, and had our- 
selves laundered, shampooed, and manicured, 
starting refreshed and full of expectations on 
our last lap to the Yellowstone. In contrast 
to the Olive Hotel, our lunch here was the 
one real "hold-up" in any hotel. Six eggs, six 
tongue sandwiches, and four cups of coffee 
were $3.75. We protested, and they deducted 
seventy-five cents. 

We had heard pleasing reports of Hunt- 
er's Hot Springs being the French Lick of the 
West; anything that spelled water sounded 
good to us, although we had crossed the up- 
per Yellowstone River only to see a little 
stream so low that the cattle were standing 
in the middle. There is nothing but the hotel 
— not even a garage. All the cars were parked 
in front and stood there all night. The place 
was crowded with tourists from all over the 
country. "Hello there!" greeted us, and to 



84 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

our surprise and great pleasure we found our 
cousins, Mr. and Mrs. H., of Fargo, with the 
glad tidings that she would go through the 
park with us. This place is unique — a low, 
rambling building, with a quarter of a mile of 
porches, a very large swimming pool of min- 
eral water, hot from the springs, and private 
baths of all descriptions. The big plunge had 
been emptied and scrubbed, and the hot wa- 
ter was pouring in, but would not be suffi- 
ciently cool to swim in for another day. 

Many charming people were here, taking 
the course of baths, resting, or just stopping 
en route, as we were. One celebrity was pre- 
sented to us, the youthful editor of '']im Jam 
Jems," Mr. Sam H. Clark, of Bismarck, North 
Dakota, and his attractive wife. There were 
other ladies in his party, all going to the 
park. They were attired in the costume of 
khaki breeches, puttees, and coats, looking 
very Western and comfortable. 

We remarked that we were unfortunate, in 
never having seen a copy of "Ji"^ J^"^ Jems." 
"You surprise me; it is on sale at six hundred 
news-stands in New York City.'' Feeling like 
mere worms, we expressed the hope of seeing 
it in San Francisco. On our arrival, we asked 



THE DUST OF MONTANA 85 

for it at the news-stand in one of the largest 
hotels. ''We get it only about once in two 
months," we were told. Later we found the 
September issue, which we read with interest. 
In the "Monthly Preamble" he says, 'Tact 
is, this good old U.S.A. seems to have slipped 
its trolley, politically, industrially, and so- 
cially, and generally things be out of joint." 
That seemed to be the tone of the whole pub- 
lication. I do not know the particular signifi- 
cance of the name of his magazine; but if he 
ever decided to make a change I wonder if he 
would consider "The Knocker Club in Ses- 
sion." Mr. Clark is a reformer in embryo, and 
his talents are unquestioned. Perhaps, in the 
broad-minded, open West, he will in time find 
something r^/zstructive to write about. Let us 
watch and see. 

After a very jolly visit, all too short, we 
started for Livingston and Gardiner, the 
northern entrance to the park. The sky was 
dense with smoke, due to the forest fires in 
the north. In Oregon a town had been wiped 
out the day before. Our eyes smarted from 
the smoke; the mountains, now the foothills 
of the Rockies, were entirely obliterated, and, 
if this kept up, we could see nothing in the 



86 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

park. Cars were turning back, and the pros- 
pect was not encouraging. The road grew 
more steep and narrow, and we could hardly 
see a quarter of a mile ahead of us. It was 
like a real London fog — pea soup. The alti- 
tude was very high, and we began to feel 
dizzy. We were on roads that were just 
shelves cut in the sides of the mountains, 
with hardly room for two cars to pass and a 
good long tumble on the lower side. It was 
not pleasant ! On a clear day perhaps, but not 
in a dense fog. 

Passing through Livingston, you turn due 
south for fifty-five miles. At four o'clock we 
arrived at Gardiner, where we had a belated 
lunch at a restaurant, and found a collection 
of five weeks' mail at the post-office. Joy! — 
and then more joy! We all wired home to 
anxious relatives of our arrival. The huge 
stone arch forms the gateway to the park. 
The officials, old army veterans, in uniform, 
stopped us and we paid $7.50 entrance fee for 
the car. There is no tax for people. We were 
questioned about firearms. None are allowed, 
and we had none. 



XI 

A WONDERLAND 

jl\s Joaquin Miller said of the Grand Canyon 
in Arizona, "Is any fifty miles of Mother 
Earth as fearful, or any part as fearful, as full 
of glory, as full of God?'' That is the Yellow- 
stone National Park! 

So much has been written of its wonder 
and beauty that it is ''carrying coals to New- 
castle" for me to add any description. It beg- 
gars description! None of us had visited it 
before; so the experiences were doubly inter- 
esting, and these facts we had forgotten, if 
we had ever known them: In 1872, Congress 
made this a national park. It is sixty-two 
miles long and fifty-four miles wide, giving 
an area of 3348 square miles in Wyoming, 
Idaho, and Montana, and is under the super- 
vision of the National Park Service of the 
InteriorDepartment.The entire region is vol- 
canic; you are impressed by a sense of near- 
ness to Nature's secret laboratories. 

The park is open from June 20th to Sep- 
tember 15th. It is estimated that sixty thou- 



88 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

sand visitors have enjoyed the splendors of 
the park this year (1919). We reached there 
August 20th, at the height of the tourist sea- 
son. On entering, we drove five miles in a 
dense smoke along the Gardiner River to 
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. There we 
spent our first night and held a "council of 
war." If the smoke did not lift, we could see 
nothing and would have to wait. Of course, 
we intended to drive our car through the 
park! After looking the situation over and 
talking with other tourists, we decided to go 
in the Government cars, for three reasons: 
First, whoever drove could see nothing of the 
scenery — you had to keep your eye on the 
road every moment, as the ways were so 
steep, with hundreds of sharp curves ; second, 
we were unaccustomed to the very high alti- 
tude, an average of eight thousand feet, all 
were feeling dizzy (one of the ladies had a 
severe nosebleed), and no "light-headed'' 
driver was safe in handling a car on those 
roads; third, if you are familiar with the 
routes, or follow the Government cars and 
get their dust, all right; if not, you will get 
off the main roads in no time. The Govern- 
ment has very comfortable White cars, hold- 



A WONDERLAND 89 

ing eleven and the driver. All the roads are 
officially inspected daily, and the drivers are 
expert. You buy a motor ticket for twenty- 
five dollars, and that ends your responsibil- 
ity. You have unlimited time at the hotels, if 
you so desire; otherwise, the trip is made in 
three days, with ample time to see every- 
thing, and even to take side trips. 

There were three hotels open this season 
— the Mammoth Hot Springs, Old Faithful, 
and the Grand Canyon. They are run exclu- 
sively on the American plan, at six dollars a 
day, with good food and every comfort. A 
private bath is two dollars extra; with two in 
a room, four dollars, or, if the bath adjoins 
two rooms, with two in each room, it is two 
dollars each, or the modest sum of eight dol- 
lars. We found that the tourists in the Gov- 
ernment cars were cared for first in the din- 
ing-room and always had good rooms re- 
served for them. This is quite a consideration 
in the rush season. Thus with your motor 
ticket of twenty-five dollars, your full three 
days' hotel bill at six dollars a day, including 
side trips, tips, etc., the park can be seen in 
absolute comfort for fifty dollars, with noth- 
ing to worry about. As we had been driving 



90 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

the car so steadily for six weeks, the relaxa- 
tion was very acceptable. The three hotels 
are quite different. The Mammoth Hot 
Springs is a big barn of a place in appear- 
ance, lacking home atmosphere, but warms 
up a bit in the evening when dancing begins. 
The next morning, to our joy, the wind had 
shifted and the smoke lifted, so we were safe 
in starting. The cars leave at nine and reach 
Old Faithful Inn by noon. Here you stay un- 
til the next noon. On this first lap of the tour 
you pass the wonderful Terraces, filled with 
boiling springs, which look like cascades of 
jewels in the sunlight. Passing the Devil's 
Kitchen, Lookout Point, and the Hoodoos, 
massive blocks of travertine, piled up in every 
conceivable shape, at an altitude of seven 
thousand feet, and Golden Gate Canyon, you 
emerge into an open, smiling mountain valley 
with high ranges on every side, through which 
runs the Gardiner River. The Frying Pan is 
a sizzling, boiling pool that comes from the 
bowels of the earth. The Norris Geyser Basin 
is filled with small geysers, spouting at inter- 
vals, and looking like bursts of steam. Em- 
erald Pool is typical of the name. As you look 
down into it, the gorgeous color deepens like 



A WONDERLAND 9I 

a real gem. The most beautiful example of 
these pools is the Mammoth Paint Pot, with 
myriads of scintillating colors. 

We could hardly wait to finish lunch, we 
were so anxious to see the famous Old Faith- 
ful spout, or ''play," more properly speaking. 
At regular intervals of about seventy min- 
utes, the mass of water is thrown 150 feet in- 
to the air with a roar of escaping steam that 
sounds like the exhaust of an ocean liner. At 
night an immense searchlight on the roof of 
the hotel plays upon it, and everyone goes to 
the farther side to view the water with the 
light showing through — a glorious sight! I 
can think of nothing but thousands of gems 
being tossed up by a waterspout at sea. The 
rainbow colors dance and radiate, making a 
fairyland scene. The chorus of "Ohs!" and 
''Ahs!" resembles a crowd viewing a pyro- 
technic display on the 4th of July. We were 
fortunate in seeing both the Giant and Castle 
geysers play. 

The Old Faithful Inn is unique, it being 
built entirely of the park timber in the rough, 
hewed from the twisted trees of the forests. 
The fossil forests are one of the marvels of 
the park, not all at a particular level, but oc- 



92 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

curring at irregular heights; in fact, a sec- 
tion cut down through these two thousand 
feet of beds, would disclose a succession of 
fossil forests, covered by volcanic material 
through the ages. 

The great open fireplaces of boulders in 
the hotel always gave a cheery appearance, 
and in the evenings the attendants pop corn 
for the guests. A very good orchestra played 
until midnight and hundreds of people 
danced on the polished floors. The table is 
excellent in all the hotels. Our only criticism 
was that the guests were kept waiting out- 
side of the dining-room until all tables were 
cleared and reset, when we could have just 
as well been sitting comfortably inside. In 
front of the hotel are the bath-houses, with 
many small pools and one large one. The 
prices are moderate. All rates, even for post- 
cards, are regulated by the Government offi- 
cials in the park. 

Toodles had informed us early in our trip 
that she would not be happy unless she met 
"a real cowboy, of the William S. Hart type, 
and a real Indian.'' Up to now she had been 
disappointed. We were sitting out under the 
trees by the hotel, waiting for Old Faithful 



A WONDERLAND 93 

to "shoot/' when the real article came by on 
horseback, leading two saddled horses. He 
was a tall, fine-looking chap, with all the pro- 
verbial trappings of an old-time cowboy^ rid- 
ing as if he were a part of his horse. As he 
was close to us, Toodles called out, ''Were 
you looking for me?'' He took no notice, and 
she repeated it. He rode on, never even turn- 
ing his head. 'The brute must be deaf," a 
rather piqued voice informed us. We had 
been accustomed to such unusual courtesy 
from Westerners that this surprised us. In a 
few moments he returned, rode up in front of 
us, and, with a merry twinkle in his eyes and 
looking straight at Toodles, said: 

"I heard you the first time. Now come and 
ride with me." 

We all laughed but Toodles. She lost her 
tone of bravado, and exclaimed, "If you 
heard, why didn't you answer me?" 

"Oh, just busy. Had to deliver my horses." 
His manner was jolly, and it looked like a 
little adventure. 

She wanted to go, but she had recourse to 
the time-honored "I have nothing to wear." 

"That doesn't matter; I will fit you out. 
Ever ride astride?" 



94 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

"No." 

"Ever ride at all?" 

"Of course, all my life!" (indignantly). 

"Then come along. I v^ill give you the fin- 
est horse in the park to ride, and show you 
views that the tourists never see." 

We all urged her to go, one lending a hat, 
another a coat, until at last she appeared with 
a khaki divided skirt, white blouse, blue coat, 
and sailor hat, looking very presentable, very 
pretty, and rather ill at ease. While Toodles 
was dressing he told us that he had been in 
the park for years and had charge of the 
saddle-horses and riding parties. As it was 
all a lark, and we thought she might not want 
her name known to him, we told him that her 
name was "Toodles." "All right," with a 
grin; "I'm on." When starting he whistled 
to his dog and called, "Come on, Toodles," 
and she nearly fell off her horse (he made her 
ride astride). 

"What's the matter? I am just calling my 
dog." 

"Oh, is that your dog's name?" Toodles re- 
plied faintly. "How funny!" 

OfT they rode up the mountains, and did 
not return until six o'clock. That evening 



A WONDERLAND 95 

^'Charlie" appeared at the dance in ordinary 
citizen's clothes, but the picturesque cowboy 
was gone. He had written a book of "all the 
fool questions people have asked me in twen- 
ty years." He kept us gasping at the tales of 
Western adventure until nearly midnight. In 
the morning he was on hand to see us off. 

The next day was clear and beautiful. Our 
road took us east over the Continental Di- 
vide and along the shores of Yellowstone 
Lake, past the mud geysers, to the Grand 
Canyon Hotel. On the divide is lily-covered 
Isa Lake, whose waters in springtime hesi- 
tate whether to flow out one end, into the 
Pacific, or out the other, into Atlantic wa- 
ters, and usually compromise by going in 
both directions. We passed over very steep 
grades commanding a superb view of Mt. 
Washburne (ten thousand feet high) through 
the knotted woods and dense pine forests, 
past the upper and lower falls, stopping at 
Artist's Point to get our first view of the 
Grand Canyon. It is twenty miles long — the 
most glorious kaleidoscope of color you will 
ever see in nature! You look down a thou- 
sand feet or more at the foaming Yellow- 
stone River. A little south of this point a wa- 



96 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

terfall twice as high as Niagara, seemingly 
out of the dense pine heights above, roars 
and tumbles into the depths below. ''Rocky 
needles rise perpendicularly for hundreds of 
feet, like groups of Gothic spires/' Again, "the 
rocks, carved and fretted by the frost and the 
erosion of the ages." And the coloring — this 
is almost impossible to describe. From the 
deepest orange to pale yellow, from Indian 
red to exquisite shell-pink, in all shades of 
soft green touched by Autumn's hand. With 
the greenish cascade of water foaming be- 
neath us and the blue dome of the heavens 
above, we stood there awed by its fearful ma- 
jesty and unequaled beauty. As if to make 
the picture more perfect, an eagle soared 
through the canyon, lighting on a pinnacle 
of jagged rocks, where his nest clung as if by 
magic. As we watched him in silence, the 
words of Tennyson, to which McDowell has 
written his exquisite composition, "The 
Eagle,'' came to us: 

''He clasps the crag with crooked hands ; 
Close to the sun in lonely lands, 
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. 
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls ; 
He watches from his mountain walls, 
And like a thunder-bolt he falls." 



A WONDERLAND 97' 

Another wonderful, and, if it were possi- 
ble, a more beautiful view, is from Inspira- 
tion Point, on the other side of the canyon. 
It is like the most exquisite cameo. Before 
you a gigantic mass of rocks, with turrets 
and towers, known as "Castle Ruins," seems 
to fill the vista. But, as I said before, it sim- 
ply beggars description. You stand there in 
the presence of the marvelous works of God, 
the evidences of great convulsions of nature 
through the ages. You feel such an atom in 
the vastness, the unending space of the In- 
finite, and you recall the words of Victor Hu- 
go in his "Intellectual Autobiography": 

"Beyond the visible, the invisible ; beyond the invis- 
ible, the Unknown. Everywhere, everywhere, in the 
zenith, at the nadir, in front, behind, above, below, in 
the heights, in the depths, looms the formidable dark- 
ness of the Infinite." 

The Grand Canyon Hotel is in every re- 
spect a modern, beautifully furnished, pala- 
tial establishment, worthy of any city. This 
is the most popular hotel, and is always 
crowded. The governors of twenty-one states 
and their parties were touring the park. They 
expressed their appreciation of the Govern- 
ment's activities in behalf of the comforts 



98 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

and conveniences for the people — also, of its 
shortcomings, in the failure to provide the 
necessary funds for further improvements. 

We found the roads in most places v^orthy 
of the name "highways"; but on the steepest 
grades, where the outside of the road shelves 
off into space, with a drop of hundreds of 
feet, there are no walls or fences, not even 
railings, to prevent accidents. In the main, 
the roads are sufficiently wide to allow two 
cars to pass; in some places, however, the 
smaller car must back down to a siding to al- 
low the Government cars, which have the 
right of way on the inside of the road, to pass. 
Many times we hung on by our eyebrows, 
apparently, and felt as if our ''tummies" had 
sunk into our boots. We found it more com- 
fortable to look up than down into the depths. 

Today we met our small boys again. I had 
forgotten them. After leaving Minneapolis, 
many times we had overtaken two boys, who 
were making a hike to the park, a distance of 
over nine hundred miles. They were about 
sixteen years of age, as sturdy, polite little 
chaps as you could meet. Many times we had 
given them a lift of fifty miles or more into 
the next town. They told us that they had 



A WONDERLAND 99 

earned the money for the trip and carried 
their camping outfits on their backs. They 
camped near a haystack at night, bought 
food (or had it given to them) on the road, 
and were having the time of their Hves. When 
I thought of the Dakota prairies and Bad 
Lands, and of the hot, dusty Montana plains, 
I reahzed more than ever the sturdy stuff 
that Westerners are made of. I would like to 
know what the future holds for those two 
lads. 

The last day of our trip was back to the 
starting-point. Mammoth Hot Springs Ho- 
tel. That morning Toodles left us, taking the 
trip out to the eastern entrance at Cody. This 
charming little lady had been with us six 
weeks, and we were sorry to see her go. 

We were told that the scenery was even 
finer on the Cody road, but we could not con- 
ceive of it. 

After going a few miles from the hotel, 
through a bit of woods, our driver jammed 
on his brakes, with the news, "Here are the 
bears !'' — two good-sized cubs and the moth- 
er bear holding us up ! They were in the mid- 
dle of the road; so we had to stop. Everyone 
wants to see the bears in the park. Well, we 



lOO IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

did/Tht old one, a big cinnamon bear, walked 
around to the side of the car, stood on her 
hind legs, with her front paws on the door of 
the car and her muzzle in my lap! I never 
was so scared in my life! "She wants the can- 
dy," the others exclaimed. I had a box of 
chocolates in my lap, and, with my hands 
shaking like aspens, I began to peel off the 
silver foil from one piece. "Don't stop for 
that; give her the candy, or she will be in the 
car!" yelled the driver. And you better be- 
lieve I did, in short order! Handing her the 
box, she gobbled every piece, foil and all. 
Everyone was standing on the seats with a 
camera trying to snap the picture. After she 
sniffed about to see if I had any more, she 
went to all the cars lined up back of us, where 
they fed her and the cubs everything they 
carried. They had to, for she foraged for her- 
self. I assure you that the sensation of hav- 
ing a huge bear eat out of your hand is a 
thriller! There are black and grizzly (or sil- 
ver-tip) bears in the park. A few venture out 
of the woods to the camps and garbage- 
dumps near the hotels. Of course, the forests 
are full of large and small game. There are 
two buffalo herds. The tame herd has in- 



A WONDERLAND lOI 

creased from twenty animals, in 1902, to 385, 
in October, 1918. We saw mountain-sheep 
and many deer. 

We went over the Dunraven Pass, one of 
the most daring drives, getting a fine view of 
Tower Falls, 132 feet high. In fact, that last 
day was one long thrill. We reached the ho- 
tel for dinner feeling a bit limp and exhaust- 
ed, we had been at such high tension for 
three days. We sat by the roaring log fire 
that evening, living it all over again. "Will 
you ever forget that view of the canyon?" — 
''How truly wonderful the trip has been!" It 
was truly wonderful! I have not given you 
even an approximate idea of the scenery or 
the wonders. I can only say, ''Go and see it 
for yourself." For those who enjoy camping, 
every comfort and facility are provided. If 
you wish to camp de luxe, the Yellowstone 
Park Camping Company maintains five per- 
manent camps or "tent cities" in the park. 
All tents have floors, electric lights, and are 
heated by wood-burning stoves. The beds are 
full-sized and comfortable. There are large 
dining-halls, recreation pavilions, and "camp- 
fires." The campers in the park were legion 
this season. 



102 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

The next morning we bade good-by to 
Mrs. H., who left us for Gardiner, and the 
"bird-man" and his lady chauffeur proceeded 
together. 



XII 

WESTWARD HO ! 

JivERYONE had the same disconsolate story 
to tell of the route through Idaho and Neva- 
da to the Coast. (I often have wondered why 
the expression "The Coast" means but one 
place, the Pacific Coast. We have a few thou- 
sand miles of sea-coast on the Atlantic, but 
no one ever speaks of going East "to the 
Coast.'') All the motor parties we met that 
came that way to the park advised us to go 
north from Gardiner, over the Yellowstone 
Trail to Spokane and Seattle, and then down 
the coast to San Francisco. One man said, 
'T wouldn't take five thousand dollars to go 
back over those roads!" We had practically 
decided to go the northern route, but the for- 
est fires were still raging in that section, and 
many cars were turned back. It was Hobson's 
choice; we had no alternative. 

Our car had been left in the garage at 
Mammoth. On leaving we found there was 
no charge for the four days' storage. It 
seemed like home to be back in our own car 



I04 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

again. We followed the same route that we 
took to Old Faithful until we reached Gibbon 
Falls, then turned west along the Madison 
River to the western gate at Yellowstone, 
and so out of the park into Idaho. 

If there are worse roads anywhere on earth 
than in Idaho, I hope we may never see them! 
It had grown hot, and every mile of the way 
was hotter. Sand, dust, ruts three feet deep, 
and chuck-holes at every turn ! In contrast to 
the roads in the park, that state is a night- 
mare! By the time we had reached Ashton 
(123 miles), we wished we had never seen 
Idaho. The Kirkbride Hotel was wretched, 
with only one bathroom for the establish- 
ment, no cafe, and dirty beyond expression. 
The town has but one street, a typical cow- 
boy town, as primitive as possible. The hotel 
manager asked if we carried our own bed- 
ding! ''Do we look as if we did?" No reply. 
We probably did — and worse. It seems that 
the camping parties from the park often 
brought tilings beside bedding with them ! At 
ten that night we found some food, in a 
wretched Chinese restaurant. 

The next day was hot and dusty, and there 
were more bad roads; but we knew that we 



WESTWARD ho! IO5 

should find a good hotel at Pocatello, with 
private bath and decent food. We went 
through Idaho Falls and the Blackfoot Res- 
ervation. 

An incident occurred here that would have 
made Toodles green with envy. We were 
taking advantage of our first stretch of good 
road in two days, and going at a lively speed. 
Away ahead, in the middle of the road, stood 
a solitary figure. We sounded our horn. The 
figure did not budge. Then we blew a blast 
that would have raised Rameses II and came 
to a stop a few feet from a man. He proved to 
be a "real honest-to-gosh," as they say out 
here, Indian chief. His frame was massive 
and his face square-jawed, of a copper-bronze 
hue. A crimson kerchief, earrings, and beads, 
with ordinary trousers and shirt, completed 
his costume. He stood there like a dethroned 
emperor. With a dignified majesty, he waved 
his arm and said, "Take me home." I turned 
to look at him as he sat, with folded arms, 
alone in the tonneau, with an air that plainly 
said, "I owned all this once; it is all mine.'' He 
told us that he was chief of the Shoshone 
tribe, and owned 250 acres; that he rented 
two of his ranches and lived on the one 



I06 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

"where the trees were, a mile up the road." 
The land was under high cultivation, with 
fine buildings. When we let him out he just 
waved us on, saying, "Me good American." 
I wondered if at heart he really were, or if he 
knew that he had to be. We often saw Indian 
women on the roadside selling garden truck 
— always with a stolid expression, and sel- 
dom a smile. If you spoke to them, their 
invariable rejoinder was "You bet" (pro- 
nounced "U-bit"). This seems to be the pre- 
vailing expression in the West. 

The YellowstoneHotel in Pocatello is very 
good, and crowded, like all of the Western 
hotels. 

The heat was intense, even at nine in the 
morning, and Ogden, Utah, 165 miles south. 
"Are the roads good?" we asked the clerk. 
Smiling, he replied, "I am from New York." 
At Dayton, we crossed the border into Utah. 
Before us laya cement road as white as snow. 
We could hardly believe our eyes. "Woman, 
bow down and worship!" the bird-man ex- 
claimed. Regardless of speed laws, we flew 
over that road for miles, through beautiful 
towns and avenues of Lombardy poplars. We 
remarked that every little bungalow was sur- 



WESTWARD ho! IO7 

rounded by these tall trees. "The Mormons 
must have planted one for each wife and 
child/' The farms were fertile and well culti- 
vated, and for mJles the peach orchards lined 
the sides of the road, the trees laden with 
fruit. At each station wagons were unloading 
hundreds of crates ready for shipment. To- 
matoes and melons, also, are raised in abun- 
dance. Brigham is a clean, attractive city, 
with peach-trees growing in every garden 
and on the roadside. They celebrate an annu- 
al 'Teach day" in September. ''Every visitor 
will receive a peach," the posters read. I 
bought a basket, of a dozen or more, for ten 
cents. Here we became acquainted with the 
red grasshopper. We thought we had left all 
of these little pests in Fargo; but here they 
were as lively as ever and as red as strawber- 
ries. And that reminds me — we have had de- 
licious strawberries for weeks (in August). 
The roads were so wonderful that we for- 
got our aching backbones and enjoyed every 
mile of the way into Ogden, to the Reed Ho- 
tel. We spent two days here, as there was 
much of interest to see and do. The hotel is 
old, but well kept up. We had a room large 
enough to hold a convention in, with a small- 



I08 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

er bedroom and bath adjoining, and eight 
large windows altogether. Again the hotel 
was crowded. The railroad strike was on in 
California, and people were marooned in 
every city; only local trains were running. 

The next day we drove to Salt Lake City, 
a distance of about thirty-five miles. Of all 
the Western cities, we were most anxious to 
see the capital of Utah. And now a joke at 
my expense! I asked the clerk in the hotel 
where we could get the steamer for SaltLake 
City. 

"What steamer?'' he asked in surprise. 

"Can't you go there by boat?" 

"Say, lady, I guess you come from the 
East." 

I admitted the truth of that. 

"Ever been West before?" 

This time a negative. 

"Don't you know that the boat has never 
been built that will float on Salt Lake?" 

I thought of "Cowboy Charlie" and his 
book of "fool questions." 

Salt Lake is a wonderful city. Whatever 
you may think of the Mormons, you have to 
admit that they are a far-sighted, industri- 
ous, and executive people. Your chief interest 



WESTWARD ho! IO9 

centers about the Temple Block, a ten-acre 
square surrounded by a stone and adobe wall 
twelve feet high. The grounds are a beautiful 
park. The Bureau of Information is a fine 
large building, where literature is distributed 
to three hundred thousand visitors yearly. 
As many as thirty-nine states and seven for- 
eign countries had been represented on the 
registry in one day. ''No fees charged, and no 
donations received," was the watchword on 
these grounds. We wondered how the place 
was supported, and were told that there were 
no pew-rentals in any of their churches, and 
no collections made, nor were there any con- 
tribution-boxes found there. 

''The Mormons observe the ancient law of 
tithing, as it was given to the Children of 
Israel, by which a member pays one-tenth of 
his income,as a free-will offering, for the sup- 
port of the Church.'' 

In the Temple Block is the Assembly Hall, 
a semi-Gothic structure of gray granite, with 
a seating capacity of two thousand, often 
used for public lectures and concerts by any 
denomination. The Tabernacle is a world- 
famed auditorium, seating eight thousand 
people, noted for its remarkable construction 



no IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

and acoustic properties. The wooden roof, 
self-supporting, rests upon buttresses of red 
sandstone, twelve feet apart, the whole cir- 
cumference of the building. These pillars sup- 
port wooden arches ten feet in thickness and 
spanning 150 feet. The arches, of a lattice- 
truss construction, are put together with 
wooden pins, there being no nails or iron of 
any kind used in the framework. The build- 
ing was erected between 1863 and 1870, and 
was nearly completed before the railroads 
reached Utah. All the imported material had 
to be hauled with ox-teams from the Missou- 
ri River. The original cost was three hundred 
thousand dollars, exclusive of the cost of the 
organ. Our guide, a lady, told us that their 
pioneer leader, Brigham Young, had planned 
and supervised the erection of the building. 
"He was a glazier and cabinet-maker by 
trade, but had been schooled chiefly by hard- 
ship and experience. He not only designed 
this and the Temple, but he built an equally 
wonderful commonwealth; one which is 
unique among theMiddle andWestern states 
for law and order, religious devotion and loy- 
alty.'' She told us that their church had es- 
tablished headquarters successively in New 



WESTWARD HO! Ill 

York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and, after 
the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, 
in 1846, it was obliged to seek refuge in the 
Rocky Mountains. They have no profession- 
al or paid preachers; any member of the con- 
gregation may be called upon to address 
them. We were interested to hear of their 
women. ''They are the freest, most intensely 
individualistic women on earth, having three 
organizations of their own. The Relief Soci- 
ety has thirty thousand members, publishes 
a monthly periodical, has up-to-date offices, 
owns many ward-houses, and spends thou- 
sands of dollars yearly for charity and edu- 
cation. The Young Ladies' Mutual Improve- 
ment Association was organized in 1869 by 
Brigham Young, chiefl}^ among his own 
daughters." {Some family party!) This asso- 
ciation now numbers over thirty thousand 
girls. It also edits and controls a magazine. 
Besides these activities, there is the Primary 
Association, with many thousands of chil- 
dren marshaled under its banner. We remem- 
bered that the women have full suffrage in 
Utah, and were not surprised to hear of their 
ward conferences and public speakers. This 
did not sound much like the "down-trodden 



112 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

slaves" that many consider the Mormon 
women to be. 

Most prominent among the structures in 
the "Block" is the Temple, began less than 
six years after the pioneers found here a des- 
olate sagebrush wilderness. Before railroads 
were built to the granite quarries, twenty 
miles southeast of the city, the huge blocks 
of stone were hauled by ox-teams, requiring 
at times four yoke of oxen four days to trans- 
port a single stone! Forty years were re- 
quired in its completion, and the structure 
stands as a monument to the untiring energy 
of these people. Its cost, in all, was four mil- 
lion dollars. Visitors have never been admit- 
ted to the Temple since its dedication in 
1893. "It was not designed as a place of pub- 
lic assembly," our guide informed us; "it is 
to us a holy place devoted to sacred ordinan- 
ces, and open only to our own church mem- 
bers in good standing." I wish that space 
permitted me to quote all that we heard of 
their marriages, and even divorces, and of 
their many quaint customs. 

The figure surmounting the Temple is 
twelve feet in height, of hammered copper 
covered with gold leaf, and represents the 



WESTWARD ho! II3 

angel Moroni, the son of Mormon, the writer 
of the Book of Mormon, which "is an in- 
spired historical record of the ancient inhabi- 
tants of the American continent, correspond- 
ing to the Old Testament/' Mormon, who 
lived about 400 A. D., was one of the last of 
their prophets, and into the Book of Mor- 
mon compiled the traditions which had come 
to him through generations. This is not the 
Mormon Bible, for they use the King James 
translation that our Christian churches use. 
The Sea-Gull Monument is also in the 
"Block." It commemorates a historic inci- 
dent of pioneer days, and was designed by 
Mahonri M. Young, a grandson of Brigham. 
A granite base of twenty tons, resting on a 
concrete foundation, supports a granite col- 
umn fifteen feet high, surmounted by a gran- 
ite globe. Two bronze sea-gulls rest upon up- 
on this ball. The birds weigh five hundred 
pounds, and the stretch of their wings is eight 
feet. On three sides of the base, in relief 
sculpture, the sea-gull story is told, which, 
briefly, is this: In 1848 this was the earHest 
settlement in the Rocky Mountains, and less 
than a year old, consisting of a camp, a log 
and mud fort enclosing huts, tents and wag- 



114 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

ons, with about eighteen hundred people. 
Their handful of crops the first year, mainly 
potatoes, having failed, they were looking 
for a good harvest the second year, or they 
would face starvation. In the spring of 1848 
five thousand acres of land were under culti- 
vation in the valley, nine hundred with win- 
ter wheat. Then came the plague of crickets 
(our friends the grasshopper family). "They 
rolled in legions down the mountain sides, 
attacking the young grain and destroying 
the crops." Men, women and children fought 
them with brooms, with fire, and even dug 
ditches and turned water into the trenches. 
It looked hopeless; their crops seemed 
doomed, when great flocks of sea-gulls swept 
down on the crickets and devoured them. 
The Mormons compare the incident to the 
saving of Rome by the cackling geese. 

We heard an amusing story of how Brig- 
ham Young came by his name. Originally 
his surname was "Brigham." Once, when his 
agent returned with some prospective brides, 
Brigham, looking them over and finding 
them too old, exclaimed, ''Go find others, 
and bring 'em young." 

The Utah Hotel is one of the finest in the 



WESTWARD ho! II5 

country. It is owned and run by the Mor- 
mons, and it does them great credit. We 
dined in the roof-garden, which compares fa- 
vorably with that of any hotel in New York. 
You look off to the Wasatch range of moun- 
tains, the beautiful fertile valley, and the 
great Salt Lake, beyond which lies the desert. 

The executive staff of the Mormon Church 
has one of the finest buildings in the city. 
The interior is paneled with native marbles 
and woods and represents a fortune. 

Returning to Ogden, we spent the next 
day visiting Ogden Canyon, a short trip of 
twenty miles. We drove through groves of 
walnut trees laden with nuts. Making a sharp 
turn on a good m_acadam road, you wind 
through a deep canyon gorgeous with au- 
tumn foliage, a beautiful sight. The river 
bank is lined with vine-covered bungalows, 
almost hidden from view. The canyon 
streams are noted for the brook-trout fish- 
ing. A Boston chap told us that he and two 
other boys caught ninety pounds in three 
days. We lunched at the Hermitage, the best- 
known resort near Ogden. It is built of logs, 
in the wildest part of the canyon. The house 
was decorated with ferns and mountain wild 



Il6 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

flowers, as artistically as a private home. We 
certainly enjoyed the brook-trout dinner 
($1.50) of fish caught that day in front of 
the hotel. Of course, this cannot be compared 
to Yellowstone Canyon, but it is very beauti- 
ful and well worth the trip from Ogden. 

That evening we pored over maps. There 
was no route across the desert that was good 
— only some were worse than others. Every- 
one advised us to take the "Pike's Peak 
Ocean-to-Ocean Highway," which follows 
the Southern Pacific Railroad (at intervals), 
and is considered a "safety-first" way. 

I never see that word "highway" that I 
don't want to laugh! A "cow-path" would 
more nearly describe any that we traveled in 
Idaho or Nevada (not to mention a few 
others). 



XIII 

NEVADA AND THE DESERT 

We did not look forward with an atom of 
pleasure to this part of the trip. We dreaded 
it. It simply had to be done. The officials told 
us that nearly all the tourists shipped their 
cars to Reno. That was valuable information 
to give us, when not a train was running 
west. The clerk pointed out a dried-up little 
woman of seventy, and said, with a wither- 
ing glance at me: "See that old lady? She has 
driven her own car across the desert twice 
this summer!" Weil, you know how such re- 
marks make you feel. Not that you care a — 
bit what that clerk thought of you, but you 
don't like to realize that you are a molly-cod- 
dle or a coward. Besides, my husband had 
laughed at my apprehensions, and that 
wouldn't do either. So I thought of our good 
fortune so far, of our slogan, and of the old 
party of seventy, and I gave my pride a hitch 
and said, ''Let's start" — and we did. 

Our route lay over the same road back 
through Brigham, a beautiful drive that far. 



Il8 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

then it turned northwest, over the northern 
part of the Great Salt Lake desert, ninety 
miles to Snowville. The sand was so deep 
that we crawled most of the way. The sun 
scorched our skin and eyes until they felt dry 
as ashes. We had left the railroad and tele- 
graph poles and had but a single-file path 
through the sand, with chuck-holes every 
few feet. When the wind blew it felt as if an 
oven-door had been opened in your face, and 
the snow-white sand covered everything, in- 
cluding the tracks in the road, which was not 
pleasant. Nothing was to be seen except the 
endless sand, dry sagebrush, cactus, and an 
occasional prairie-dog. We met but two cars 
that day. I can conceive of nothing more ut- 
terly desolate and God-forsaken than the 
desert. There is a silence of deathlike still- 
ness that gets on the nerves, and the same- 
ness is wearisome. 

We were glad to see Snowville, although 
Snowville was not much to see. It consisted 
of one street, with possibly twenty houses, a 
garage, two stores, and a few trees. The peo- 
ple who owned the grocery-store rented 
rooms. They were kind and hospitable, and 
made us comfortable as they could. One can- 



NEVADA AND THE DESERT II9 

not pick and choose in the desert. You are 
glad and thankful to find anything that looks 
like a bed and water. The woman told us that 
the two stalwart young men were her sons, 
just returned from service; one was a major. 
They were running the garage and helping 
in the store. The whole family were educat- 
ed, intelligent people, except the old man, 
whose vocabulary was limited to "You bet!" 
and *'By heck!'' What they could find in life 
in such surroundings, with nothing, abso- 
lutely nothing, to commend the place, was 
hard to conceive. And yet the mother told 
me that the women in the village had done 
more Red Cross work during the war than 
those of any town of its size in the state, and 
they had oversubscribed their quota in the 
Liberty Loans ! ''The war did not seem very 
real to us 'way out here," she said. "What we 
read in the papers seemed like a novel. But 
when my boys went it brought it nearer 
home to me. We were so far from the busy 
world our lives were too limited to realize 
what was going on across the seas." I could 
understand that, for one day of the desert 
made me feel an isolation that I never had 
felt in the middle of the Atlantic. 



I20 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

They had a bathroom; but if the water 
was being used in the garage or kitchen, it 
would not run upstairs. Someone had driven 
miles away to get some meat for supper; so 
it was quite late before we had anything to 
eat. Fried meat, fried eggs, fried potatoes — 
all soaked in grease; no milk or butter, and 
the coffee and tea we could not drink. 

Across the street was a little patch of green 
corn. I went to the house and asked the wom- 
an if she would sell me a few ears. She told 
me that they were leaving the next morning 
— moving away — as her husband could not 
make a living. He was a professor of lan- 
guages fromMassachusetts,a cultivated gen- 
tleman! When he rode up on horseback I 
went out and shook hands with him, and 
laughingly said : 

"I am your long-lost sister from Massa- 
chusetts.'' 

He was off his horse and bowing in a Ches- 
terfieldian manner. "You are most welcome, 
madam; but, alas! we have nothing to offer 
you." 

"Oh, but you have, sir — the pleasure of 
meeting you both and some of your green 
corn." 



NEVADA AND THE DESERT 121 

He picked me a half-dozen ears, and when 
I offered to pay him, he said, "Please, no !" 

He asked where we were from. "The East 
sounds very far away. I wonder if I shall ever 
see it again." 

I gave one of the children a dollar, and re- 
turned with my precious corn, which the 
good-natured Irish cook boiled to a rock for 
our supper. 

There was a small piazza in front of our 
room, the only place to sit except in the street 
or in the private parlor of the family. The 
moon was coming up over the distant moun- 
tain, red as blood and big as a cart-wheel. 
While we were getting cool and enjoying the 
scene, Mary appeared with the remainder of 
the raw meat, saying: 

"We put it out here to keep cool; there 
ain't no ice in this hole of a place. Fm going 
to leave first of September. Gee, but Til be 
glad! They couldn't hire me to stay here any 
longer for fifty dollars a month!" (She evi- 
dently felt that it was up to her to entertain 
us.) "Nothing but work and heat — and not 
even a movie!" 

"How early can we get breakfast?" 

"Seven o'clock. I wouldn't get up before 



122 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

that for President Wilson." (The picture of 
President and Mrs. Wilson in that place 
made us smile.) 

''Try a little vamping on Mary," I sug- 
gested to friend husband. It worked. She 
called us at five, and by six we were out again 
on the desert, with the sun rising behind us, 
and Montello, the next town, 115 miles to 
the west. 

That day stands out as the worst expe- 
rience of the trip. We went fifty miles with- 
out seeing a living creature except jack-rab- 
bits and one coyote. The coyote ran across 
the trail and stopped fifty feet away, watch- 
ing us drive by. The sand was deeper and the 
chuck-holes, even with the most careful driv- 
ing, seemed to rack the car to pieces. If we 
had had an accident, the outlook would have 
been decidedly vague for us. Not a car or a 
telegraph pole in sight. By ten o'clock that 
morning the sun scorched our skin through 
our clothing. But we had one good laugh. 
Over a deep chuck-hole there had been built 
a stone bridge. On one end, in large black let- 
ters, was "San Francisco" (the first sign we 
had seen with that welcome name) and on 
the other end was "New York" ! The incon- 



NEVADA AND THE DESERT I23 

gruity struck us as being so absurd that we 
roared with laughter. Here in this God-for- 
saken desert, a ^'thousand miles from any- 
where," to see that sign ! It took some joker 
to conceive of that. 

By noon we were in sight of the railroad, 
feeling as if we had found a long-lost friend. 
A freight station, some oil-tanks, a few shan- 
ties, and a lodging-house for the men, where 
we got some food — that was all. We filled up 
with water, and on we went. A wind had 
come up and the sand blew in eddies, almost 
blinding us. The Nevada roads were no im- 
provement on Idaho, and the trail was oblit- 
erated many times by the swirling sand, mak- 
ing the going almost impossible. Before 
reaching Montello, a real desert sandstorm 
so covered us with sand that the car looked 
white ; our clothes and our eyes and ears were 
full of it. We thought the top was coming off, 
or the car would turn over, and it was diffi- 
cult to see the road, much less to keep in the 
trail. By crawling, we reached the town and 
stopped in front of the first building and got 
out. We were blown off our feet. We stag- 
gered and waded through the sand, hardly 
seeing where we were going, until we reached 



124 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

a door; then we were blown in! After we re- 
covered our breath and had shaken off a lit- 
tle of the sand, we watched the storm, which 
by this time was a howling gale and the sand 
so dense that you could hardly see fifty feet. 

"Just suppose this had happened out 
there?" pointing back of us. 

''Don't think of it. Come and get some ice 



cream." 



I had not noticed that we were in a small 
cafe, with drinks, ice cream and cakes, etc., 
for sale. The ice cream washed down the sand 
and cooled our dry throats. A nice little 
woman ran the place, and she gave us this 
information: There was a Southern Pacific 
railroad hotel in the town, but, owing to hun- 
dreds of men being idle on account of the 
strike, the place was full, and it was the only 
place to get lodgings. It was a hundred miles 
and more to Elko, where the next hotel could 
be reached. We inquired if the way to that 
town was as bad as the roads we had come 
over that day. "Worse," was the reply; "you 
are foolish to attempt it." 

As soon as the storm let up we went across 
to the hotel, only to be told that there was 
not an empty bed or a cot. We canvassed the 



NEVADA AND THE DESERT I25 

town with the same result. So there we were, 
worn out, dirty, hungry, and feeling "all in,'' 
with the cheerful prospect of sleeping on a 
pile of sand in the car or trying to drive 
across more than a hundred miles of desert 
to find a bed that night. Here is where I 
"struck." 

"I am not going another mile," I declared, 
with a finality in my voice that spoke vol- 
umes. 

"What do you wish to do?" asked a weary 
husband. 

"Ship the car to Reno, and take the train." 

Our watches said five o'clock, and the 
Overland Limited was due at 6:15 p. m. Hus- 
band hunted up the freight agent. "Oh, yes, 
you can ship the car; but — " The first "but" 
was that the car was too large to get through 
the freight-shed door. We must leave it on 
the platform or in a garage until an "auto- 
mobile car" came through Montello, and that 
might not be for several days. Besides, the 
agent said he could not give us a bill of lad- 
ing if the car was not in the shed. It was out 
of the question to leave it on the platform, 
and to put it in a strange garage, with no one 
responsible for it, was taking a long chance 



126 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

that we might never see it again, or that it 
would be used or damaged or detained in- 
definitely. Here friend husband asserted him- 
self. 

"I am not going to leave that car here un- 
less it is locked up in the freight-shed and I 
have the receipt for it. You take the train 
and I will drive the car to Reno." 

"What ! let you go on alone, as tired as you 
are? Nothing doing! Mr. T. G. M., the car is 
going to be shipped, and we are going on 
that 6:15 train." I admit that my language 
was not very elegant; neither was the place 
nor my feelings. 

"If that is the situation, then the car goes 
into that shed," he said. 

"It can't be done," said the agent. "We 
have tried to get Cadillacs and other large 
cars in there before. If you get your car in 
there, I'll eat it!" 

"What about time?" we inquired of the 
agent. He informed us that we must set our 
watches back an hour at Montello ; so we had 
over an hour, and the train was marked up 
"late." For the next hour my husband worked 
over that car, backing a few inches, going 
forward a bit, turning and twisting on the 



NEVADA AND THE DESERT I27 

narrow platform; but the car was still diag- 
onally across the doorway. Two men pitched 
in and helped. An inspiration! — he poured 
black oil on the floor under the rear wheels 
and then tried to slide the wheels over. That 
would have worked if the floor had not been 
so rough. Another inspiration! — he jacked 
up the wheels and gave the car another 
shove. Over it went, with both rear wheels 
inside the door! Then he backed the car into 
the shed as neat as a whistle. It all sounds 
like a perfectly simple job. Try it some time 
in your leisure hours. The freight agent took 
off his hat in admiration. "Didn't believe it 
could be done/' he said, looking at me with a 
grin. 

It cost $3.85 per hundred pounds and $5.73 
war-tax to ship the car to Reno (or to San 
Francisco — no difference in the rate to either 
place). It weighed, including four spares and 
other equipment, 4960 pounds, and the bill 
was $196.69. 

On inquiring about reservations, the agent 
said: "I doubt if you can get even an upper 
berth; the Limited is always full. Now that 
the strike is off, it is sure to be crowded." 

Would he wire? 



128 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

''No use; the train has left Ogden hours 
ago." 

I would have gladly sat up all night in the 
the train to be out of the desert. 

In another hour we were in a drawing- 
room, scrubbed and brushed, looking less like 
two tramps and more like respectable people. 
Unless you have been through a like expe- 
rience, you cannot share our feelings, as we 
sat down to a perfectly good, clean, whole- 
some meal in the diner, and slept in clean 
linen that night. I am glad that we had the 
experience and can appreciate that phase of 
Western life. I am equally glad that we 
shipped the car, which reached us at the 
California border a week later, in good order 
and still white with sand. 

The road to Reno, after leaving the desert 
country, follows the oldest transcontinental 
route to the Coast — the trail of the early pi- 
oneers, the gold-seekers of '49. For miles it 
follows the Humboldt River, through Pali- 
sade Canyon, past the thriving town of Elko, 
Battle Mountain, and Lovelock. Reno, the 
metropolis of Nevada, is the seat of the state 
university. There is much of interest to see 
and many side trips to the mining regions, 



NEVADA AND THE DESERT I29 

all worth while. It is but a few miles from 
the state line of California, where the motor- 
ists' troubles are ended, for from here to San 
Francisco the roads are smooth as marble, 
with no dust, and the signs read "Smile at 
Miles" — "Miles of Smiles" — our welcome to 
^California, the beautiful land of sunshine and 
flowers, of which so much has been said in 
song and story and the half can never be 
told. 

"Why do all the people have the tops of 
their cars up?" 

"Why? Because the sun always shines." 
And we were soon to enjoy the glad sun- 
shine that makes you feel young and happy, 
with a joy in living like that experienced in 
the Riviera. 



XIV 

THE END OF THE ROAD 

IJEYOND Reno the ascent of the Sierra Neva- 
da begins, and you pass Lake Tahoe, six 
thousand feet high, the most delightful sum- 
mer-resort region in America. The Lincoln 
Highway joins the other routes here, and is 
really a highway, making a glorious finish in 
Lincoln Park, San Francisco. One of the fin- 
est views is the mighty canyon of the Ameri- 
can River, with the timbered gorge and the 
rushing stream two thousand feet below. 
You are held spellbound by the scenery, as 
you descend the western slope to Sacramen- 
to, the capital of California, 125 miles from 
San Francisco. 

The city of Sacramento is beautifully situ- 
ated on the river of the same name, and has 
the distinction of being the first white settle- 
ment in interior California. The old fort built 
by John A. Sutter for protection against the 
Indians is kept as a museum of early-day 
relics. It was an employee of General Sutter 
who first discovered gold in California, and 



THE END OF THE ROAD I3I 

the first nugget was tested and its value de- 
termined inside this old adobe fort. 

The capitol building, a classic structure, is 
situated in a park of thirty-four acres of won- 
derful trees and shrubs, brought from every 
portion of the world. The Crocker Art Gal- 
lery boasts of the finest collection of art treas- 
ures belonging to any municipality west of 
New York. The ride to San Francisco, of one 
night, is a popular trip on the fine large 
steamers through the Sacramento Valley, 
noted for its vast wealth of agriculture and 
fruit. 

Stockton, also, is an interesting city, with 
its eleven public parks. Acacia, orange, um- 
brella, and palm trees line the streets, mak- 
ing the city a veritable park. West of the 
city are the largest peatlands in the United 
States, on ground that has been reclaimed by 
means of levees. The fields of grain and alfal- 
fa are equal to any in the states we had visit- 
ed. With four hundred miles of navigable wa- 
terways, transportation facilities are excep- 
tional, and it is small wonder these valleys 
of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin are 
the banner "growing section" of the state. 
It was like driving through a private estate 



132 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

all the way to Oakland, where our first view 
of glorious San Francisco harbor greeted us. 

Oakland and Berkeley, ''the bedrooms" of 
San Francisco (as a prominent banker ex- 
plained to us), are on the east shores of the 
bay. On the front of the City Hall in Oak- 
land (which, by the way, we were told is the 
tallest building in California) was the sign, 
typical of these open-hearted people, "How- 
dy, Boys !" (to the returning soldiers) in place 
of the proverbial "Welcome." 

Oakland is a large, rapidly growing city, 
with its fine two-million-dollar Hotel Oak- 
land occupying an entire block. The Munici- 
pal Auditorium, seating thirteen thousand 
people, is near the shores of Lake Merritt, in 
the City Park. It is a great railway center, 
the terminus of the Southern Pacific, Santa 
Fe, and Western Pacific lines. From here you 
take the ferry to San Francisco. 

Berkeley is so near that we did not realize 
that we were not in Oakland. Days can be 
thoroughly enjoyed spent here at the Uni- 
versity of California, the second largest edu- 
cational institution in the world, command- 
ing a view of the Golden Gate, the bay, and 
San Francisco. Early in the eighteenth cen- 



THE END OF THE ROAD I33 

tury, Bishop George Berkeley of Cloyne, Ire- 
land, came to America to establish colleges. 
In recognition of his devotion to the cause of 
learning, this city was named for him. His 
prophetic words, "Westward the course of 
empire takes its way,'' have been justified 
and realized in California. On the university 
campus, the Sather Campanile towers above 
all the other buildings at a height of over 
three hundred feet. 

The most distinctive feature of the univer- 
sity is the Greek Theater, in a hollow of the 
hills, planned on lines similar to those of the 
ancient theater at Epidaurus. The equable 
climate makes it possible to hold outdoor 
performances at any season of the year. We 
were told that ten thousand people could be 
seated comfortably, ''Every artist who visits 
the Coast aspires to appear in our Greek 
Theater,'' said our informant, and added with 
pride, "Sarah Bernhardt, Nordica, Tetraz- 
zini, Gadski, Schumann-Heink, and Josef 
Hofmann have all been here — yes, and 'Big 
Bill' Taft too." Since then. President Wilson 
addressed a capacity audience here. 

As we knew that we should visit both of 
these cities many times, we drove to the 



134 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

wharf and boarded a ferry-boat holding sev- 
enty-five cars, which would land us at our 
destination, San Francisco. While crossing 
the harbor, which is seventy-five miles long 
and in places fifteen miles wide, almost sur- 
rounded by high peaks, let me try to picture 
to you the scene that greeted our eager eyes. 
It was about seven o'clock in the evening. 
The rays of the setting sun made a glow over 
the water and the distant city, touching the 
tops of the hills with an artist hand. To the 
northwest, crowning the scene like a giant 
sentinel, was Mt. Tamalpais. What Fuji- 
yama is to the people of Japan, Mt. Tamal- 
pais is, in a less oriental way, to the Califor- 
nians. Whether you see it at sunrise or sun- 
set, or standing out in bold relief against the 
noonday sky, or with the moon silvering its 
summit, or wrapped in a mist of clouds, it is 
a glorious sight, a never-to-be-forgotten pic- 
ture. Below this summit is the dense wilder- 
ness of the Muir Woods, named in honor of 
John Muir, the celebrated California natural- 
ist, with 295 acres of towering redwood trees, 
the famous Sequoia sempervirens^ many attain- 
ing two hundred feet in height. 

Back of the city are the Twin Peaks, with 



THE END OF THE ROAD I35 

a boulevard encircling their heights, looking 
down on the harbor, alive v^ith ships from 
every land — from the islands of the South 
Seas, the Mexican West Coast, China, Japan, 
Siberia, tropic America, British Columbia, 
Australasia, and our own dependencies of 
Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines — dressed 
with the flags of every country, and above 
them all, floating in its majesty, the Stars 
and Stripes, in honor of the arrival of the Pa- 
cific fleet, which, under command of Admiral 
Rodman, had passed through the Golden 
Gate that day and swung at anchor in the 
harbor — fifty splendid battleships of all de- 
scriptions, ablaze with lights. And small 
craft, from high-powered motor launches to 
fishing-boats, ''wind-jammers," or old-time 
sailing-vessels, ocean liners, great freighters, 
transports, and tramps, all formed a part of 
the scene along the Embarcadero, where lie 
at anchor the ships that bear the merchan- 
dise and products of the world to this gate- 
way of the West — over seven million tons of 
freight yearly. The true heroes of sea fiction 
man these ships — rugged, venturesome men, 
with whom Stevenson, Frank Norris, and 
Jack London have peopled their books and 



136 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

pictured their scenes of the water-front of the 
city. 

We were landed at the ferry slip, and with 
a sensation never to be forgotten we drove 
off the wharf into San Francisco — "the city 
loved around the world/' built upon hills 
overlooking the expanse of the Pacific, with 
a cosmopolitan throng of half a million peo- 
ple. We could not have reached here at a 
more fortunate or auspicious time. San Fran- 
cisco was en fete in honor of the fleet. Every 
street and building was festooned with flags, 
banners, and garlands of flowers; the crowds 
of people were carrying flowers and waving 
flags. Market Street, the Broadway of the 
city, was arched with flowers, and suspended 
from the largest arch was a huge floral bell 
of the native golden poppies. All public con- 
veyances and even private cars were deco- 
rated. Searchlights illuminated the scene. 
Bands were playing, auto-horns were toot- 
ing, and the air was alive with excitement — 
joyous, overbubbling pleasure, that had to 
find a vent or blow up the place. 

All of the hotels were packed. The St. 
Francis looked like the Waldorf on New 
Year's Eve. It was some hours before we 



THE END OF THE ROAD I37 

found refuge in the Bellevue, a fine residen- 
tial hotel on Geary Street. 

The next day the Transcontinental Gov- 
ernment Motor Convoy arrived, which add- 
ed to the celebration that lasted a week. It 
had come over the Lincoln Highway, with 
every conceivable experience; the gallant 
young officer in command, Lieutenant- 
Colonel Charles McClure, told us at dinner 
the next evening that ''Our worst experiences 
were in the desert. The sand was so deep 
and the trucks were so heavy that at times 
we only made a mile an hour. When one got 
stuck, the men cut the sagebrush and filled 
the ruts, and then we were able to crawl.'' 
The city gave them an ovation, and "dined" 
them as well — and doubtless would have 
liked to have 'Vined" them also. 

The next day we were in the thick of the 
whirl. I did not consider our trip really end- 
ed until we stood on the sands of the Pacific. 
We motored through the city, out to the for- 
mer Exposition grounds, where but a few 
buildings were left standing, and to the Pre- 
sidio, one of the oldest military stations in 
our country, embracing an area of 1542 acres, 
overlooking the harbor. The formidable 



138 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

coast defenses make San Francisco the best- 
fortified city in America. Farther to the east 
is Fort Mason, the residence of the com- 
manding officer of the Western Division; 
also, the transport docks, the only ones 
owned by our Government. 

Driving through Lincoln Park, we entered 
Golden Gate Park, covering 1013 acres, with 
hundreds of varieties of plant life from all 
parts of the world, artificial lakes, boule- 
vards, and the gorgeous flowers for which 
California is famed. We could hardly realize 
that at one time this was but a desolate ex- 
panse of sand-hills. Within the park is the 
stadium, the largest athletic field of its kind 
in America, thirty acres in all, seating sixty 
thousand spectators. The park extends to the 
Ocean Beach Boulevard, on the edge of the 
sands, where the breakers come bounding in 
against the Seal Rocks and the high promon- 
tory on which the Cliff House stands. The 
water is cold, and a dangerous undertow 
makes bathing unsafe, but the shore is lined 
with cars; hundreds of people and children 
are on the sand, and the tame sea-gulls are 
walking on the street pavement very much 
like chickens. 



THE END OF THE ROAD I39 

We went up to the historic Cliff House, the 
fourth of the name to be built on these rocks. 
Since 1863, the millionaires of this land and 
the famous people of the world have dined 
here, watching the sea-lions play on the jag- 
ged reefs. It is closed now, and looks as de- 
serted as any of the tumble-down old build- 
ings which surround it. 

Along the Golden Gate shore for miles are 
points of interest and charming homes. Many 
of the bungalows are surrounded by flowers 
of every description and color, with apparent- 
ly no attempt to segregate them. All shades 
of pink, reds, and purples are jumbled to- 
gether; the sides of the houses are covered 
with vines, geraniums, heliotrope, fuchsias, 
and endless other plants, just one heavenly 
blotch of color! These little gardens seem to 
say, "Everything will grow in here; it may 
not be according to the ethics of landscape 
gardening, but at least you will love if' — and 
you do ! We were especially struck with the 
absence of large grounds, even about the 
more pretentious homes, except, of course, 
out of the city, where the estates are the last 
word in beauty and luxury. There is a joy- 
ousness about the native Californian that is a 



140 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

revelation. In other cities the people were 
proud of the homes, or the buildings, or the 
commercial life, or something man-made; 
here they just seem to glory in the sunshine, 
the climate, the scenery, and the flora — in 
fact, everything God-given. The "joy of liv- 
ing" expresses it — to me, at least. I can bet- 
ter understand now the feeling of California 
friends living in New York. "The place stifles 
me; I want to get back to the golden sun- 
shine." Frankly, I used to think it a pose. I 
apologize ! 

Then, people have time here to be polite. 
On my first street-car ride, an elderly lady 
was hurrying to get off. "Take your time, 
madam," said the polite conductor, and as- 
sisted her off. In New York it would be, 
"Step lively there; step lively!" giving her a 
shove. In getting on a car my heel caught 
and I banged my knee. The conductor said, 
"I hope you didn't hurt yourself." In New 
York, if he noticed it at all, the conductor 
would have looked to see if I had injured the 
car! 

"San Francisco has only one drawback; 
'tis hard to leave," said Rudyard Kipling. 
That is true. I would like to speak in detail 



THE END OF THE ROAD I4I 

of SO many things — the fine hotels and mu- 
nicipal buildings, the beautiful country clubs 
and golf links; the old Dolores Mission and 
the churches; the Latin Quarter, Chinatown, 
and Portsmouth Square, the favorite haunt 
of Robert Louis Stevenson v^hen a resident 
here; the Fisherman's Wharf, v^here the net- 
menders sit at their task v^ith stout twine 
and long wooden needles, like a bit of "Little 
Italy"; of the fogs that keep everything 
green in the dry season, and in an hour's 
time disappear as if by magic, leaving the 
sunshine to cheer you; of the steep streets 
and houses built on ''stepladders"; of Nob 
Hill, with its one-time sumptuous homes, 
now turned into clubs, and the splendid Fair- 
mont Hotel, built upon the Fair estate. Books 
have been written on the restaurants of this 
city — French, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, 
Greek, and Hungarian — varying in price and 
in character of cuisine, with many high-class 
''after theater'' cafes, frequented by the more 
exclusive patrons. Tait's at the Beach re- 
sembles the Shelburne at Brighton Beach or 
Longvue on the Hudson. 

Soon after our arrival came the visit of the 
President and his party. Politics were dis- 



142 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

carded. He was the guest of the city. San 
Francisco certainly spells ''hospitality," and 
proved it. The decorations left from the wel- 
come to the Pacific fleet and the Motor Con- 
voy were still beautiful, but more were add- 
ed. "A mass of waving flags" about describes 
it. A solid wall of humanity lined the streets, 
with thousands of children carrying fresh 
flowers and banners. Old Sol, in all his glory, 
challenged a fog to mar the splendor of his 
welcome. The luncheon of sixteen hundred 
women at the famous Palace Hotel spoke of 
the public spirit of their sex. No Eastern city 
could boast of a more attractive gathering. 
It was an interesting sight to see that assem- 
blage sit in silence for over an hour, listening 
to a man; no matter what their private opin- 
ions were, they wanted to hear first-hand the 
convictions of their President — and they did, 
in plain Anglo-Saxon terms. But I have di- 
gressed, and left the reader and the car on 
the Ocean Drive. 

Yes, this was indeed ''the end of the road," 
with all of California yet to see. We had trav- 
ersed the continent from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific without an accident or a day's illness, 
and with only two punctures ! We look back 



THE END OF THE ROAD I43 

on comparatively few discomforts, and many, 
many pleasures and thrilling experiences, 
with keen satisfaction. 

Unless you really love to motor, take the 
Overland Limited. If you want to see your 
country, to get a little of the self-centered, 
self-satisfied Eastern hide rubbed off, to ab- 
sorb a little of the fifty-seven (thousand) va- 
rieties of people and customs, and the alert, 
open-hearted, big atmosphere of the West, 
then try a motor trip. You will get tired, and 
your bones will cry aloud for a rest cure; but 
I promise you one thing — you will never be 
bored! No two days were the same, no two 
views were similar, no two cups of coffee tast- 
ed alike. In time — in some time to come — the 
Lincoln Highway will be a real transconti- 
nental boulevard. But don't wish this trip on 
your grandchildren! The average motorist 
goes over five thousand miles each season, 
puttering around his immediate locality. 
Don't make a "mental hazard" of the dis- 
tance. My advice to timid motorists is, "Go." 

I have not tried to give a detailed descrip- 
tion of anything in this brief narrative of our 
trip. Just glimpses here and there of the day's 
run, which may stimulate some "weak sister" 



144 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

to try her luck, or perchance spur the mem- 
ory of those who have "gone before us." 

EXPENSES 

In giving a table of our expenses, it is unim- 
portant to give in detail the amount of the 
tips to porters or chambermaids, or to state 
what the hotel bill was in each place. That 
depends upon the individual — whether you 
care to have more or less expensive accom- 
modations, or to what extent you care to in- 
dulge in "extras." 

We paid (for two) from three to six dol- 
lars a night for room and bath, but in all 
cases there were cheaper ones to be had. The 
matter of restaurant bills is also a personal 
item. In giving the cost of hotels, I have in- 
cluded breakfast and dinner. The lunches are 
listed as "extras." The garage expenses 
included storage and washing the car. A 
night's storage varied from $1.50 in the East 
to fifty cents in the West. The cost of wash- 
ing the car was from $1.00 to $2.50, also de- 
pending on the locality. Every man knows 
how often he wants his car cleaned. One New 
York man that we met in Minnesota told us 
that his car had not been washed since he 



* n 
^\^^ 

^^^ 



THE END OF THE ROAD 145 

left. It looked it! This, by the way, was the 
only New York license that we saw west of 
Chicago. Rather remarkable! 

Our total mileage was 4154 miles — thirty- 
three running days. We used 338 gallons of 
gas (21 to 40 cents), $99.80; sixty-one quarts 
of medium oil (15 to 35 cents), $12.80; ga- 
rage, storage and cleaning, $28.50; hotels and 
boat fares for seven weeks for two, $256; ex- 
tras (laundry, lunches, postcards, postage, 
fruit, etc.), $51.38; tips, $50; expenses in Yel- 
lowstone Park (including entry fee for car, 
$7.50), $100; work on car in service stations 
(looking over, oiling, etc.), $64.24; D. & C. 
boat from Cleveland to Detroit, for car, $14.- 
50. Total, %677.22, or about $13.50 a day 
for fifty days (for two people). 

Additional expenses were adjustment on 
new tire (never used), $35; cost of shipping 
car across desert, $196.69; railroad tickets 
(including drawing-room, $17.75), $72.50. 
Total, $304.19. 

We might eliminate the new tire adjust- 
ment of $35, and if we had driven across Ne- 
vada it would easily have been two hundred 
dollars less, but we should doubtless have 
had repair bills to balance that sum and 



146 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE 

more. Except for gas, oil, and garage expen- 
ses, the rest can be easily adjusted, according 
to the individual, and lessened considerably. 
And remember that includes a war-tax on 
many things. 

This trip can be taken in perfect comfort 
by two people for thirteen dollars a day, in- 
cluding everything, which means that you 
are traveling as well as living. Not bad, con- 
sidering the ^'H. C. of L." today! 



THE END 

















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